The Kingdom of Judah was a state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age, after the split of the United Monarchy. It is often referred to as the Southern Kingdom to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel. Judah emerged as a state probably no earlier than the 9th century BCE, although there are differences of opinion as to the dating. In the 7th century BCE, Jerusalem became the capital of the kingdom and a city with a population many times greater than before and would dominate the state and its neighbours, probably as the result of a cooperative arrangement with the Assyrians, who wished to establish Judah as a pro-Assyrian vassal state controlling the valuable olive industry. Judah prospered under Assyrian vassalage, (despite Hezekiahs revolt against the Assyrian king Sennacherib), but in 605 the Assyrian Empire was defeated, and the ensuing competition between the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian Empire for control of the Eastern Mediterranean led to the destruction of the kingdom in a series of campaigns between 597 and 582, the deportation of the elite of the community, and the incorporation of Judah into a province of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 01:57:27 +0000