Topic 11 of 33 - Your Place in the Learning Journey
The Monarchy Period
The period of the Israelite monarchy - from Saul's anointing around 1020 BCE to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE - is the subject of the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, and forms the backdrop for most of the prophetic literature. It was a period of political achievement and theological crisis, of moments of genuine faithfulness and long stretches of the kind of moral and religious failure that the prophets could not stop denouncing.
The monarchy began reluctantly. The book of Samuel presents the people's request for a king as a rejection of God's direct rule - "that we also may be like all the nations" (1 Samuel 8:20). God grants the request but warns of what it will cost. Saul, the first king, begins promisingly but ends in disobedience and tragedy. David, who follows him, becomes the standard against whom all subsequent kings are measured - not because he was morally exemplary (his adultery with Bathsheba and his arrangement of her husband Uriah's death are among the most unflinching moral portraits in the Old Testament) but because of his wholehearted devotion to God and his role as the recipient of the Davidic covenant.
Solomon built the Temple and presided over the kingdom's greatest territorial extent, but the biblical account is notably ambivalent about him. His wisdom is celebrated, but so is his accumulation of horses, wives, and wealth - all things Deuteronomy 17 warns the king against. After Solomon's death, the kingdom split: the northern kingdom of Israel (ten tribes) and the southern kingdom of Judah (two tribes). The northern kingdom lasted until the Assyrian conquest in 722 BCE; the southern kingdom survived until the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE. Both kingdoms are judged by the Deuteronomistic editors through the lens of covenant faithfulness - how consistently each king maintained exclusive worship of Israel's God and avoided the worship practices of surrounding peoples.
Archaeologically, the period of the monarchy is much better documented than the earlier periods. The Tel Dan Stele, discovered in 1993, mentions the "House of David" and confirms David as a historical figure and dynastic founder. Assyrian records confirm the siege of Samaria in 722 BCE and Sennacherib's campaign against Judah in 701 BCE. Babylonian Chronicles confirm the destruction of Jerusalem. The monarchy period is where the biblical narrative begins to intersect most clearly with the recoverable historical record.