First Period of Decline
The death of Prophet Suleman (AS) — or King Solomon, as he is called in the Bible — marks the beginning of the first period of decline for the Israelites. The united monarchy disappeared, and in its place arose two kingdoms — Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The people of the northern kingdom crowned Jeroboam, an official who had rebelled against King Solomon and taken refuge in Egypt, and he made Shechem his royal city. The southern kingdom continued to be ruled by the Davidic dynasty, its first monarch being Rehoboam, son of Solomon, with its center at Jerusalem.
Although
both kingdoms were
strife-ridden from the very beginning, Israel was especially
turbulent because of its large population which seldom agreed on anything.
Politically unstable, the northern kingdom suffered a prolonged period of
internal warfare until 876 B.C., when an army officer Omri got hold of the
throne and built a new capital at Samaria. He, however, adopted a policy of
compromise with paganism, as a result of which the common people began to
assimilate various polytheistic practices of the neighboring communities. The
rise of paganism became especially serious under Omri’s son Ahab, who married
a Phoenician princess,
Jezebel. She started
a ruthless campaign to wipe out Israel’s traditional monotheism, and to
replace it with the Canaanite fertility cult and the worship of Baal. Two
prophets, Prophet Elias (AS) or Elijah and Prophet Al-Yasa (AS) or Elisha, rose
and tried their best to warn their people,
and to check
their growing inclination
towards paganism, but the cult of Baal and the associated rituals of
licentious dances remained irresistibly attractive for the austere Israelites.
At last, Almighty Allah’s anger manifested itself in the
form of
Assyrians from the
north, whose takeover
of Israel started gradually but
ended with severe subjugation. Initially, the kings of Israel were forced to
pay tribute money to Assyria, but in 721 B.C., the Assyrian armies, under king
Sargon, attacked and plundered Samaria,
killing thousands of
her inhabitants.
According to an Assyrian inscription, King Sargon
carried away 27,290 Israelites into captivity, and scattered them in his
eastern provinces, terminating the existence of the northern kingdom as an
independent nation.
On the other hand, the history of the southern state of
Judah displays a relatively slower degeneration in beliefs and morality.
However, they too started to indulge in idol-worship and transgressions of the
Divine Law, becoming more and more corrupt with every passing generation.
Prophet Isaiah rose and tried to reform his people during the period 740 B.C.
to 700 B.C.. His warnings and prophecies — which were collected in the “Book of
Isaiah” of the Old Testament — clearly testify to the moral decadence of his
times. Here are a few statements from his sermons:
You sinful nation, a people weighed
down with iniquity,
a race of evildoers, children whose
lives are depraved,
who have deserted the Lord, spurned
the Holy One of Israel,
and turned your backs on him!
Why do you invite more punishment,
why persist in your defection?
Your head is all covered with
sores, your whole body is bruised;
(Isaiah 1:4,5)
Your rulers are rebels, associates
of thieves;
every one of them loves a bribe and
chases after gifts;
they deny the fatherless their
rights and the widow’s cause is never heard.
(Isaiah 1:23)
Once again the Lord spoke to me; he
said:
Because this nation has rejected the
waters of Shiloah,
which flow softly and gently,
therefore the Lord will bring up
against it the mighty flood waters of the Euphrates.
The river will rise in its channels
and overflow all its banks.
In a raging torrent mounting
neck-high it will sweep through Judah.
With his outspread wings
the whole expanse of the land will
be filled,
for God is with us.
Take note, you nations; you will be
shattered. Listen,
all you distant parts of the earth:
arm yourselves, and be shattered;
arm yourselves, and be shattered.
Devise your plans, but they will be
foiled;
propose what you will, but it will
not be carried out;
for God is with us.
(Isaiah 8:5-10)
Then came Prophet Jeremiah, who tried to shake his
people out of their perverted ways, idolatry, and apostasy, during the period
627 B.C. to 587 B.C.. His sermons, however, met with an intense opposition from
a corrupt society that was addicted to idol-worship to the point of fanaticism.
His teachings were later collected as the “Book of Jeremiah” in the Old
Testament, from which the following excerpts are taken:
Listen to the words of the Lord,
people of Jacob, all you families of Israel.
These are the words of the Lord:
What fault did your forefathers
find in me,
that they went so far astray from
me, pursuing worthless idols
and becoming worthless like them;
that they did not ask, “Where is
the Lord, who brought us up from Egypt
and led us through the wilderness,
through a barren and broken country,
a country parched and forbidding,
where no one ever traveled,
where no one made his home?
I brought you into a fertile land to enjoy its fruit and every good thing in it,
but when you entered my land you
defiled it and
made loathsome the home I gave you.
The priests no longer asked, ‘Where
is the Lord?’
Those who handled the law had no
real knowledge of me,
the shepherds of the people
rebelled against me;
the prophets prophesied in the name
of Baal
and followed gods who were
powerless to help.
(Jeremiah 2:4-8)
Stop before your feet are bare and
your throat is parched.
But you said, ‘No, I am desperate.
I love foreign gods and I must go
after them.
As a thief is ashamed when he is
found out so the people of Israel feel ashamed,
they, their kings, their princes,
their priests, and their prophets,
who say to a block of wood, ‘You
are our father’
and cry ‘Mother’ to a stone.
On me they have turned their backs
and averted their faces from me.
Yet in their time of trouble they
say,
‘Rise up and save us!’
Where are the gods you made for
yourselves?
In your time of trouble let them
arise and save you.
For you, Judah, have as many gods
as you have towns. (Jeremiah 2:25-28)
Israel, I am bringing against you a
distant nation,
an ancient people established long
ago, says the Lord,
a people whose language you do not
know,
whose speech you will not
understand;
they are all mighty warriors,
their jaws are a grave, wide open,
to devour your harvest and your
food,
to devour your sons and your
daughters,
to devour your flocks and your herds,
to devour your flocks and your herds,
to devour your vines and your fig
trees
They will beat down with the sword
the walled cities in which you trust.
(Jeremiah 5:15-17)
Despite all these explicit and unambiguous warnings —
delivered to the inhabitants of Judah by two of their great prophets — there
was no sign of any remorse or repentance whatsoever. Instead, the Israelites
stubbornly continued in their pagan practices and disobedience of Divine
injunction, thereby inviting the wrath of Almighty Allah (SWT).
Divine punishment first appeared in the form of Babylonian forces marching into Judah in 604 B.C., when King Jehoiakim acquiesced without any struggle and agreed to pay heavy tribute to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylonia. He, however, rebelled against his Babylonian overlords in 601 B.C., resulting in the first siege of Jerusalem that lasted three months. The armies of Nebuchadnezzar entered the Holy City on March 15, 597 B.C., and plundered the Temple of Solomon. They decimated the society by deporting the new King Jehoiachin (Jehoiakim’s son), his family, noblemen, and thousands of influential citizens, soldiers, and skilled craftsmen as captives to Babylonia. Nebuchadnezzar then placed the king’s uncle Zedekiah on the throne of Judah. Soon Zedekiah also became involved in a conspiracy against Babylonia, resulting in the second siege of Jerusalem. This time the city remained under siege for 18 months, and the conditions deteriorated to such an extent that some of the inhabitants were forced to eat human flesh.
Finally, the wall of Jerusalem was breached on July 9, 587 B.C..
The rebellious vassal
king was captured
and was forced to watch as his
sons were slaughtered. Then he was blinded and taken in chains to Babylonia,
where he later died in prison.
Nebuchadnezzar
decided to make
an example of the
city, and his orders were carried out with cruel thoroughness. The city walls
were demolished. The Temple and the palace were stripped of all valuables and
burned to the ground. Thousands were killed, and a large part of the population
was taken as captives to Babylonia, more than 500 miles away. The kingdom of
Judah itself became a Babylonian province, which presented at that time a
deeply scarred look. Everywhere, towns were ransacked and burned, crops
destroyed, and villages deserted.
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