Our Week in Review - The Divided Kingdom

Last week I mentioned that God divided the kingdom of Israel in two after only three kings had ruled. This was God's judgment on the Hebrews for not following after Him and obeying His laws. We spent two weeks going through the history of both nations ~ the larger Kingdom of Israel to the north, which was ruled by men other than descendants of David, and the smaller Kingdom of Judah in the south, where a descendant of David always sat on the throne.

We also studied the prophets in the context of which nation and king they coincided with. For example, did you know that the prophet Isaiah prophesied in Judah during the reigns of King Uzziah, Ahaz, Hezekiah and Manasseh? Or that Elijah and Elisha came several decades after Isaiah, prophesying to the northern Kingdom of Israel?

It has been fascinating for me to put the prophets in the proper historical context, and to learn about the nations that existed at that time from both a secular perspective and a biblical one. We read in one of our history books, for instance, that the Assyrian Empire was quite advanced in certain ways, and is credited with inventing paved roads and the shielded battering ram, for besieging walled cities. This sounds quite impressive, doesn't it? Yet from a biblical perspective, the Assyrians were a hated and feared enemy of the Israelites, worshipping the false god Baal. God used them to bring judgment on the Israelites. (fyi, this is the same Baal mentioned in I Kings 18, when the prophet Elijah called down fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice, while the priests of Baal were unsuccessful in getting their god to hear them and consume their sacrifice).

We are just making so many connections between familiar Bible stories!

Daughter G and son G made special timelines in their history notebooks just for this period of the divided kingdom. Each day after we read from the Bible, I would fill in parts of the following chart on our white board, and they would copy this onto their timeline (provided by our Tapestry of Grace history curriculum, not something I made!) This was a great visual to help us see which prophets went with which kings, and to see the succession of kings in each kingdom.



We put smiley faces beside those kings who followed after God, and frown faces next to those who didn't. Unfortunately, the vast majority of kings in both nations "did evil in the eyes of the Lord" and got a frown face.



This was too abstract for my younger boys, so we did something a little more hands on with them. I wrote all the names of the kings of Judah on one sheet of paper, and all the names of the kings of Israel on another. We added the smiley faces and frown faces to the kings of Judah. Little Man kept the one I had written, but not before sons C and L copied down all the names onto their own pieces of paper.



We made little "pockets" for each kingdom, cut the names apart.....


....and inserted them into the correct pocket.


We learned there were a lot of kings whose names began with "J". :0)

The northern kingdom of Israel collapsed first, in the year 722 B.C. The southern kingdom of Judah lasted another 125 years before being conquered by the Babylonians and dispersed throughout the Babylonian Empire (the children learned the word "diaspora", which I was excited to teach them because I didn't learn what that word meant until I was an adult!). At that time, the city of Jerusalem and the beautiful Temple of the Lord were utterly and completely destroyed. I actually shed tears when we read about that.

(Insert my boys rolling their eyes and saying, "mo-o-o-o-om!" here. They constantly tease me over how easily I cry!)

Here's a teaser for next week ~ Daniel, of "Daniel and the Lion's Den" fame, gets inserted into this time period! The children were amazed to make that connection and in their minds, put him where he belongs in history.

I know my history posts are long.....I find it difficult to convey in a few words all that we are/I am learning this year from our history and Old Testament studies! How thankful I am for God's Word, and for the work that the authors of Tapestry have done to make our study of the ancients both fun and relevant. And how privileged I feel to be able to teach this to my children and learn together with them!