Dive into the turbulent times of ancient Israel with a focus on the divided kingdom period, spearheaded by King Saul, David, Solomon, and beyond. As fear led Jeroboam to make pivotal changes, the divergence between Judah and Israel deepened, impacting how the divine was approached. This podcast episode uncovers these dynamics, highlighting how the House of Israel and the House of Judah faced divergent destinies due to leadership decisions and prophetic insights.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Scholars call it the period of the divided kingdom. Down through all the years of King Saul, King David, King Solomon, Israel was one people, one nation, governed by one ruler. But after Solomon died, and as a direct outgrowth of his giving in to the rank idolatry of his wives, God split the kingdom in two, gave ten tribes to Solomon’s servant, a man named Rehoboam, left two tribes to Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, solely because of his promise to David. These two divisions became known as the House of Israel in the north, with its capital in Samaria, the House of Judah in the south, with its capital in Jerusalem. Jeroboam moved by fear, broke faith with God. He changed the festivals, may even have changed the calendar. Some think he even changed the Sabbath day. Now very late in this troubled time, a prophet came on the scene. He is one of the first of the writing prophets. His name is Hosea. His position in time is placed firmly by a list of the kings who reigned during the time that he was a prophet. Now, when you read the Old Testament, it’s crucial that you keep in mind who is who and where they are. Because the book of Kings, 2 Kings in particular, will confuse the daylights out of you because you don’t realize in one case where you have actually shifted ground and now you’re talking about the king of Israel or now you’re talking about the king of Judah. It seems at times there’s much more going on in the kingdom of Israel. There’s a reason for that. One is that they went bad a lot more often than the king of Judah did. And that accounts for the presence of the prophets. That accounts for all the noise going on up there. Now, some of the prophets reside in the house of Israel. Some of them reside in the house of Judah. And they’re sent different directions with their messages. There are marked differences in what they have to say based upon this simple distinction. And so it’s kind of important when you’re reading along in the prophet or reading along in the book of Kings to know exactly who it is we’re talking about, where they’re located, and to whom their prophecy is directed. Now the reason is that the first king of the house of Israel, Jeroboam I, created two new centers of worship. No longer were people supposed to go to Jerusalem. One of them was in Bethel, which was on the road south. You had to go by Bethel to even get to Jerusalem. It served as a kind of spiritual barrier for the people. So Jeroboam made a proclamation. He said, it’s too much for you to have to go to Jerusalem. Now, that by itself was not a very big deal, but he took another step. He changed the Feast of Tabernacles, the date, and moved the feast to a date a month later. Now, we can’t really tell for certain whether he did that by means of a calendar change or whether the calendar was the same and he simply moved the feast. But it got moved from the full moon of the seventh month to the full moon of the eighth month. Now, from the prophet Hosea, we learned he did not stop there. He appears to have built an entirely different holy day system. He did this because he was afraid that if the people kept on going down to Jerusalem to the feast, their heart would turn back to the king of Judah. They would want to be one kingdom with their brothers. They would end up killing him. And fear moved him to make these changes. Now, all through this period of time, there is a pattern that develops. The people would fall away. They would go after idols. They would suffer the results of all that. In Judah, though, they would occasionally be led back to God by a reforming king, and God’s holy days would often be the reason for the reform. They showed the way back to God and out of idolatry. But the house of Israel, in the house of Israel, those holy days were gone. In a way, the people could no longer find the thread that pointed the way back to God. They were cut off. So in all their 250-year history, there was never a revival. There was never a good king that brought them back to God. They had lost the way, and they just couldn’t get it back. Late in their history, one of the first writing prophets wrote down what God had to say to him about that time and that place. You’ll find his prophecies in Hosea, the book of Hosea. And he begins by saying, This would have been Jeroboam II. The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea, he wrote… And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto you a wife of the whoredoms, and children of whoredoms, for the land has committed a great whoredom in departing from the Lord. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. Now, mind you, he’s laying the groundwork here for something we’re about to come to in the book of Kings. But he says, let’s call this boy’s name Jezreel. Now, Isaiah will later speak of his sons and say, I and the sons that God has given me are for signs. Now, it’s a heavy burden laid upon Hosea in that his wife and his son and his daughter all turned out to be signs because of their names and to be held up before the people as examples. This is where we’re going. It’s a heavy burden laid upon Hosea. There is some question of what this involves. Some people think he actually had to take a prostitute to be his wife. Fact is, though… You may be talking about a distinction without a difference because the whole nation had gone off chasing other gods. Their morals were all shot to doll rags. There was no firm grasp of morals anywhere in the country. Hosea might have been saying, well, I’ll go down and marry somebody in Judah. He says, no. Take yourself a wife of whoredom. And I think maybe what he’s talking about is whoredom in the literal sense, because it was practiced that way in the shrines of most of these gods in that time. So Hosea, as his reward, if you want to call it that, for being a prophet, has to take a wife out of this nation of whores and raise up children with her. Now, you know, when you understand the role of a real prophet and what they have to go through, no one in his right mind would ever aspire to being one. So as you read Hosea, you need to remember that Hosea and Gomer, his wife, were signs. They were types of the relationship between God and Israel. For God took Israel to be his wife. Israel played the whore. Hosea 1, verse 6 says, She conceived again and bare a daughter. And God said to him, Call her name Lorahema, for I will have no more mercy upon the house of Israel. I am going to utterly take them away. I will have mercy on the house of Judah. I will save them by the Lord their God, but I will not save them by bow or sword or by battle, by horses nor by horsemen. Huh, it’s interesting. God is going to save the house of Judah, but not by battle. Well, when Gomer had weaned the daughter, Lorahemma, she conceived and bare another son. And God said, call his name Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people, and I will not be your God. This is a stunning prophecy. The name of this boy, Lo-Ammi, means not my people. And God says, you’re not going to be my people anymore. There’s a bright line drawn here. This is the point where, the point of no return, if you will. Israel had gone so far down this path, they had rejected those things which really identified them as God’s people, or better yet, identified who their God was. They had walked away from it. And because of that, God said, you’re not my people any longer. Well, there’s a lot more to that story. Grab a pencil and a piece of paper. I want to give you a phone number and an address and an offer. And when I get back, we’ll go on with what Hosea had to say about the future for Israel.
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Most Christians have no idea how the greatest of Jewish holidays became the greatest of Christian holy days. Ronald Dart’s second book, The Thread, God’s Appointments with History, is now available from Amazon.com or directly from BornToWin.net. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.
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What’s fascinating about Hosea’s prophecy at this point is that while we have crossed this point of no return, while we have now said that Israel is going to go down and out as a people, They’re going to be destroyed. They’re not God’s people anymore. Then comes this prophecy right on the heels of it. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. It shall come to pass that in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people. There it will be said to them, you are the sons of the living God. Now, what on earth can that mean? Because if you know the history of the time, you know that Israel went on for a long time after this, all the way to something over 250 years of history. And then they were taken captive by the Assyrians, never to be heard from again. How then are we going to come to the place to where in the place where it was said to them, you’re not my people. There it shall be said to them, You are the sons of the living God, because that never happened from the time he gave this prophecy until the time they went away. But then he says this, Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Now, why God makes some of this as obscure as he does is, no, I can’t explain that. All I can say is that it seems like he’s dropping hints for us all over the place. He’s leaving a line of breadcrumbs for us to follow out of the forest. He’s giving us these ideas that somewhere out there, something is going to happen that involves a reunion of the children of Judah, the children of Israel, and a united kingdom again. And as far as I can tell, it hasn’t happened to this day. But then in chapter 2, he goes on. Say to your brethren, Ammi, to your sisters, Reuhaima, plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband. Let her put away her whoredoms out of her sight and her adulteries from between her breasts. lest I strip her naked and set her as in the day she was born and make her like a desert and set her like a dry land and slay her with thirst. I’m not going to have mercy on her children, for they are the children of whoredoms. Now, you can take this metaphorically entirely dealing with the nation of Israel. But at the same time, you almost have to realize that something was going on in Hosea’s own life. with his wife and with his children, and that they really were not his children. Their mother, he said, has played the harlot. She that conceived them has done shamefully, for she said, I’ll go after my lovers that give me my bread, my water, my wool, my flax, my oil, my drink, and chased off after them. I think a lot of commentators look at this and think, well, she’s looking at these other gods whom she says provided her with all these things. Could be. It also could be a lot more real and literal than that. Because after all, Hosea and Gomer were types of God in Israel. Therefore, I will hedge up your way with thorns. I’ll make a wall. She won’t be able to find her paths. She’ll follow after her lovers and never catch up with them. She shall seek them but not find them. And then she shall say, well, I’ll go and return to my first husband because it was better with me then than now. She did not know that I gave her corn and wine and oil and multiplied her silver and gold. And then she went right out. They all went out and prepared them for Baal. I gave them all this stuff. And what did they do? They went and gave it to another god. Therefore, I’m going to return and take away my corn. I’m going to take away the wine and the season thereof. I’m going to recover my wool, my flax given to cover her nakedness. And I’m going to discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers. That’s an interesting thing all by itself, because a lot of times these people, when they’re having affairs, think that’s the only person they’re fooling around with. And here he says, no, everybody’s going to know. And none shall deliver her out of my hand. And then he makes this statement, which is kind of startling whenever you understand. And again, it helps if you know where we are. We are in the house of Israel. We’re in a land where Jeroboam cut off the worship of God, where he changed the holy days, changed everything involved with the worship. He said, no, no, you don’t have to go down to Jerusalem anymore and may even have changed the calendar. He says, I will cause all her mirth to cease forever. her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. Whose feasts? Whose Sabbaths? Whose new moons? Hers, as opposed to God’s. Now, it’s this last that leads some people to conclude that as a result of Jeroboam’s changes in the shrine, the priesthood, and the festivals, probably even the calendar changes, The mention of new moons brings that to light. The whole thing seems to suggest that they have turned away from God, His whole system of worship, completely. The end result of this was a 250-year decline and final destruction of the house of Israel. It takes a long time sometimes for the fruit of decisions you make as a people to come to fruition. And I’m afraid that in our own country, here, right now, we’re fairly late in the whole pattern, which is very similar to the pattern that they went through in those days. Hosea only holds out a hope of a reunion in days far off beyond the exile which was coming. But now, a mere 90 years or so after the death of Solomon, the pattern that was established is continuing on, on its way toward Hosea and Jeroboam II and the ultimate final end of the house of Israel. I said before, reading through the book of Kings, you have to be careful to take note of where you are. Sometimes you’re reading about the house of Israel, sometimes about the house of Judah. When I used to teach Old Testament survey, I required each student to construct his own chronological chart of what they were reading. And what was fascinating for me as well as for them is that no two of them ever agreed, which happened to be one of the points I was making in the assignment. I wanted them to understand that the chronological records of the Old Testament are incomplete and that they sometimes are actually using different systems depending upon which government you’re talking about. And therefore, being certain, dead certain, about what year we are in is sometimes a little bit iffy. But in this time period, making your own chart is really helpful in keeping track of what’s going on. If you just had the time and wanted to do it, you’ll sit down as you’re reading through the Kings and make up your own chart so you can understand and begin to internalize what was happening. These foolish kings, by the way, the ones in Judah who were supposedly the ones that were going to be following God more closely, they kept taking wives of the daughters of the Israelite kings. In the twelfth year of Joram, the king of Israel, Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, began to reign. He was 22 years old, Ahaziah was. He reigned one year in Jerusalem. That’s all he lasted. His mother’s name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri, the king of Israel. You know, taking these wives of the daughters of these Israelite kings, having the females in the house that came from that northern kingdom was going to be a problem because of their religious backgrounds and their upbringing at the feet of their mother, who was, you remember her name, Jezebel. Well, Ahaziah walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did evil in the sight of the Lord. He was a Judean king following the things that the house of Ahab did. He was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab. You know, you have to be kind of careful where you take your wife, what her background is, who her people are, what she believes in, because she is going to have a profound influence on your life from that day forward. Well, he went with Joram, the son of Ahab, to the war against the king of Syria. And the Syrians wounded Joram, Jehoram. And King Joram went back to be healed of the wounds in Jezreel that the Syrians had given him. Jezreel seems to have been something of a resort, a spa. It sits between the headwaters of two rivers, one running down to the Mediterranean near Haifa, the other emptying into the Jordan to the east. So our man goes down there because this is a place where he thinks he can be treated, where he can recover from his wounds and heal up and perhaps be a little more comfortable than he would be at home. Might have been in the winter, might have been a little cold up in Samaria. So, Joram goes down to the spa at Jezreel, and Jezreel then becomes the center, the node around which all the events now begin to take place, and it begins to figure heavily by the time we get all the way down to Hosea, who speaks of Jezreel. Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, the king of Judah, went down to see Joram, the son of Ahab in Jezreel, because he was sick. Well, you know, Jerusalem, again, is fairly high, and again, makes one wonder if this was winter. And the king of Judah thought, well, why don’t I go on down to the spa at Jezreel, spend a little time there with the king and visit him. He’s sick. Now we’re going to be introduced to a different, a very different and very violent king of the house of Israel. This is an important transition in the history of the time. I’ll tell you about him when I come back after this short break.
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Elisha the prophet, oh yeah, he’s still there, still functioning, called one of the children of the prophets and said to him, get yourself dressed, take this box of oil in your hand and go to Ramoth Gilead. When you get there, look out Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat. Go in and ask him to rise up among his brethren and carry him into an inner chamber. Okay, at this time, Jehu was the commander of the army. He’s an interesting fellow and will come to play a very big role. I was struck by him because my dad used to use this term for people he didn’t like very much. He would call them a Yehu, as in that Yehu. And oddly enough, if you transliterate Jehu into Greek, it comes out Yehu. And I’m kind of wondering if the origin of that term in our language didn’t come from this man. Well, he was a commander of the army. He said, take this box of oil, pour it on his head and say, thus saith the Lord, I have anointed you king over Israel. Then open the door and run. Don’t tarry. Don’t hang around for even a moment. Now this running away is highly symbolic. An era of great violence is about to begin, and this prophet is told, get yourself out of there. So the young man, the prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead. When he came, he behold, the captains of the host were all sitting there. And he said, I have an errand to you, O captain. And Jehu said, to which one of us? He said, to you, O captain. And he arose and went into the house. He poured the oil on his head and said to him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have anointed you king over the people of the Lord over Israel, and you shall smite the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets and the blood of all the servants of the Lord at the hand of Jezebel. All those things that Ahab and Jezebel had done, all the chickens were coming home to roost big time. If you remember, Ahab was given a curse and told what was going to happen to him. And God says, okay, when he repented, he said, I won’t bring it in your days. I will bring it in the days of your sons. That’s where we are. He goes on to say, for the whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall and him that is shut up and left in Israel. Now, the Hebrew here is quite literal. I think it is intentionally crude. Every modern translation steps away from it. They should not. The image of every male who can stand up is what is intended, and it’s intended to be brutal. It’s intended to be shocking. I think it is even symbolic that Elisha himself didn’t go. He sent an underling. He said, I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha, the son of Abijah. The dogs will eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be no one to bury her. And he opened the door, this young prophet did, and ran for his life. He literally ran out the door, leaving the other officers standing there to stare at him and saying, what in the world was that? Then Jehu came out to the men sitting out there, and one of them said to him, Is everything okay? What did this mad fellow want? And he said to them, You know the man. You know what he was here about. Jehu seems to think that his fellow officers were setting him up. And they said, No, it’s not true. It’s false. Tell us. He said, Well, here’s what he said. Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed you king over Israel. This must have been electrifying. They hasted. They took every man his garment and laid it under him on the top of the stairs. They blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king. So from that day forward, Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, conspired against Joram. Now, Joram had kept Ramoth-Gilead. That was his town, he and all Israel, because of Hazael, king of Syria. It was a kind of a border town to keep him out. But King Joram had gone on down to be healed in Jezreel. He’d gone down to the spa to see if he could recover from the wounds he got in his last battle. And Jehu said, if it’s in your minds to do this, don’t let anyone out of this town. Don’t let anyone escape to go tell this in Jezreel. So Jezreel loaded up in a chariot, got a bunch of men around him, and took off for Jezreel. That’s where Joram was recovering. Ahaziah, the king of Judah, remember, had come down to see Joram at the spa. And there stood a watchman on the tower in Jezreel. And he looked out across the land. He spied a company, a man approaching. He said, I see a company. And Joram said, take a horseman, run out there and meet them and say, is it peace? So there went out one on horseback to meet him and said, thus saith the king, is it peace? And Jehu said, What have you got to do? What are you talking about peace? Get behind me. And the watchman said, The messenger came to him, but he’s not coming back. So he put out a second one on horseback when he came to him and said, Thus saith the king, Is it peace? And Jehu answered, What have you to do with peace? How can you talk about peace? Turn behind me. And the watchman said, He’s coming on even faster. And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously. You know, I guess a man is the same in all of his activities. Because Jehu was a furious man, and he drove his armies the way he fought his battles, the way he drove his chariot. And now the king of Israel and the king of Judah have come to a judgment day.
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Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to You may call us at Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app.
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