Judges 4-5
The story of the victory of Deborah and Barak over Jabin and Sisera is well known, and the location of the battle is clear. Less clear, however, are the locations of other places mentioned in the story, but the context of the story and Joshua’s descriptions of Israel’s tribal boundaries (Joshua 19) enable some possible identifications to be made. The story takes place in the time of the Judges, and a judge named Deborah was holding court in the territory of Benjamin. Meanwhile a man named Jabin was ruling over the Canaanites in the north, and his capital was located at Hazor, which must have been reinhabited after the Israelites had completely destroyed it during the conquest of Canaan (Joshua 11). Jabin’s commander Sisera was located in Harosheth-haggoyim (possibly meaning “farmland of the Gentiles”), a location that is not certain, but the context of the story suggests it refers to the plain near Megiddo and the Kishon River. Deborah called upon a man named Barak to lead an army of Israelites up Mount Tabor to draw Sisera to attack with his forces. Barak was from Kedesh-naphtali, a town that is noted as being close to Zaanannim. At some point a Kenite named Heber and his wife Jael had also set up their camp at the Oak at Zaanannim, which must have been located a little west of Jabneel (Joshua 19:33). The location of Jabneel is well established, leading some scholars locate Zaanannim a little further west near modern ash-Shagara, which is also called Ilanya and likely preserves the word Elon (“oak”). Regarding Kedesh-naphtali, this author has recently discovered that Khirbet Kashtah would make a good candidate (shown on this map), since it satisfies the requirements of Joshua 19:33 and Judges 4 very well. Ash-Shagara and Khirbet Kashtah are both appropriately located within territory that belonged to Naphtali, and they sit along two key routes just north of Mount Tabor, where Israel’s troops were gathered. So it is fitting that Sisera would have passed by these locations as he fled the battle on foot, perhaps on his way to King Jabin in Hazor. Finally, it is not difficult to see how the name Kedesh could have evolved into Kashtah over time. Returning to the story, we read that Sisera and his vast army of chariots advanced to Mount Tabor, and the Israelites charged quickly down the mountain to counter-attack. The Israelites routed the Canaanites and pursued them all the way back to Harosheth-haggoyim. Deborah’s song commemorating the victory suggests that a sudden downpour also swelled the Kishon River, causing the chariots to become stuck in the mud (Judges 5:4-21). The story concludes by recounting how Sisera himself met his demise at the hands of Jael while he was fleeing on foot. After this, Jabin’s strength was broken, and the Israelites continued to press against him until he was destroyed.
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Jehu Executes Judgment
2 Kings 9-10
More than two centuries before the prophet Habakkuk struggled to understand how God could use the wicked Babylonians to accomplish his good purposes (Habakkuk 1), a man named Jehu rose to power over Israel and carried out deeds that were similarly God-ordained yet incredibly brutal. We first hear of Jehu while the prophet Elijah is listening for God’s voice in the cave at Horeb (1 Kings 19:16-17). There God tells Elijah to anoint Hazael as king over Aram, Jehu as king over Israel, and Elisha as the prophet to succeed him. Together these three men would carry out God’s judgment upon the wicked in Israel. Elijah then found Elisha and anointed him as prophet, and sometime later Elisha carried out the rest of God’s commands to anoint Hazael and Jehu (2 Kings 8:7-15; 2 Kings 9:6-10). This was completed as King Joram of Israel was at Jezreel recovering from wounds suffered in a battle with the Arameans at Ramoth-gilead. While he was there, King Ahaziah of Judah came to visit him, and Elisha sent one of his disciples to Ramoth-gilead to anoint Jehu, commander of Israel’s forces, as king of Israel. Jehu and his men then headed for Jezreel, and Joram and Ahaziah went out in their chariots to meet him. Jehu suddenly shot Joram with an arrow and killed him, and Ahaziah fled toward Beth-haggan in his chariot. Jehu and his men overtook Ahaziah at the ascent of Gur (likely the pass between Beth-haggan and Gur) and shot him with an arrow. At this point it appears that Ahaziah (or his chariot driver) must have reversed direction–perhaps desperately passing back through Jehu and his men–and headed for Megiddo, but Ahaziah later died there. After this Jehu returned to Jezreel and convinced the royal eunuchs to throw Jezebel out of the palace window to her death. Jehu then wrote to the officials of Samaria, warning them that they must prove their loyalty to him by sending him the heads of Joram’s seventy sons. Fearing Jehu’s power, the officials complied. Later Jehu traveled to Samaria, and along the way he met forty-two of Ahaziah’s family who were on their way to greet Joram’s family in Jezreel. Jehu and his men slaughtered all forty-two relatives at Beth-eked of the Shepherds, an uncertain location that must have been located somewhere along the road from Samaria to Beth-haggan. After Jehu arrived in Samaria, he and his men killed the rest of Ahab’s family. Later they slaughtered many prophets of Baal as well.
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The First Jewish War against Rome
Much like the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 B.C., the ill-fated Jewish war against the Romans from A.D. 66-73 became a defining event in the history of Israel, and it affected the nascent Christian church as well. Tensions between Jews and Romans had run deep ever since Pompey first seized the land of Israel for Rome in 63 B.C., and some of these tensions can be seen in the Gospels (e.g., Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26; John 19:1-22). Tensions continued to mount until finally, in A.D. 66–just six years after Paul was transferred from Caesarea to Rome–open rebellion broke out in Jerusalem and other areas throughout Judea and Galilee. King Agrippa II fled Jerusalem and sought refuge in Galilee, and the Roman governor in Syria, just north of Israel, assembled a legion of soldiers to quell the rebellion. Western Galilee, northern Samaria, and cities along the Mediterranean coast were soon recaptured, but the Romans suffered catastrophic defeat at the pass at Beth-horon, losing 6000 soldiers and their aquila (a highly prized standard for each legion). After this, Jewish leaders formed a provisional government in Jerusalem and appointed commanders over various regions. Galilee was placed under the command of Josephus Matthias, later called Flavius Josephus. The Sicarii, a group of fighters who had already been fighting against the Romans, also attempted to solidify power in Jerusalem, but struggles between them and the other factions forced the Sicarii to relocate to Masada, a desert fortress south of En-gedi. Early in A.D. 67 the Roman general Vespasian and his son Titus arrived in Ptolemais with several legions and began to recapture Galilee and Gaulanitis. Soon after this, however, Vespasian was recalled to Rome, where he was installed as emperor. Titus continued the effort in Judea, and by A.D. 70 the vast majority of the resistance had been crushed, including in Jerusalem itself. After a seven-month siege of the city, Jerusalem’s walls were breached and eventually razed to the ground, as was Herod’s Temple. Many of the Temple’s treasures were taken by Titus to Rome, as depicted on the Arch of Titus in Rome. The last vestiges of resistance around Machaerus were defeated by A.D. 72, leaving Masada as the final holdout for a group of about 1000 Sicarii. By A.D. 73 the Romans captured this fortress as well, ending all open rebellion in Judea. The First Jewish War had a lasting impact upon Jews in Palestine and even upon Judaism itself. The destruction of Herod’s Temple completed the shift begun centuries early after the destruction of the first Temple, re-centering Judaism around the synagogue instead of the Temple and placing rabbis in the role of spiritual leadership formerly held by priests. The Christian church likewise experienced a further shift of leadership from Jerusalem to Antioch and other key cities, though the fourth-century church historian Eusebius noted that bishops continued to exist in Jerusalem during the decades following the war. Eusebius also recorded that many Christians fled to the city of Pella just before the war broke out, but some scholars dispute this claim. Various passages of Scripture, including Jesus’ teachings on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) and the apostle John’s many visions of the end times (Revelation 6-18), are believed to allude to the traumas suffered during the First Jewish War.
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Bashan
Few areas in Israel have caused more confusion over their related placenames than the plain of Bashan in northeast Israel. This fertile land was seized from King Og after he attacked the Israelites as they were preparing to enter the Promised Land (Numbers 21:32-35; Deuteronomy 2:24-37; 3:1-4), and it was assigned to half the tribe of Manasseh (Deuteronomy 3:13-14; Joshua 13:29-31). It was renowned throughout Bible times as a land of oak forests (Isaiah 2:13; 33:9; Ezekiel 27:6; Zechariah 11:2) and verdant pastures for cattle (Ps. 22:12; Jeremiah 50:19; Ezekiel 39:18; Amos 4:1). Though Bashan’s boundaries were somewhat loosely defined, numerous biblical references to Bashan clarify that it generally encompassed the area shown here. Less clear, however, is the region intended by the scant references to an area called “the Argob” (Deuteronomy 3:4-14; 1 Kings 4:13), a term likely meaning “stony heap.” The Argob was a subregion within Bashan that, in its strictest sense, appears to have referred to an ancient bed of cooled lava that stood (and still stands) about twenty feet above the surrounding plain. At the same time, however, several references note that the Argob encompassed sixty cities, which must have spanned an area well beyond the lava bed, so that the term was essentially equivalent to Bashan. This broader meaning likely grew out of a natural tendency to reference the larger area by its most recognizable nearby feature–the cooled lava bed (e.g., “the whole region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maakathites”). Another placename associated with this region that has caused much confusion among scholars is Havvoth-jair. The term, meaning “settlements of Jair” (Jair was one of the Judges of Israel; see Judges 10:3-5), is used throughout the entire span of Israelite history, from Numbers to Chronicles, with about half of its occurrences limiting the scope of Havvoth-jair to thirty (or twenty-three) towns in Gilead (Numbers 32:40-42; Judges 10:5; 1 Kings 4:13; 1 Chronicles 2:22) and the other half associating it with sixty towns in Bashan (Joshua 13:30; Deuteronomy 3:14; 1 Chronicles 2:23). Some scholars have tried to resolve this apparent descrepancy by assuming that the original scope included only the land we typically regard as Gilead (southwest of Bashan) and that later writers recast history to include Bashan in Havvoth-jair. This explanation, however, seems at odds with the fact that some of the references to Havvoth-jair in Bashan are made as far back as Joshua and as late as the book of Chronicles. Perhaps the most confusing passage is 1 Chronicles 2:22-23, where verse 22 locates Jair’s twenty-three towns in Gilead, but in the very next verse it seems to place Havvoth-jair in Bashan as well, as indicated by the mention of Kenath and sixty towns. It could be, however, that Jair initially captured towns in Gilead, and then later he captured additional towns in Bashan, and they were all regarded as settlements of Jair. This seems even more likely if the mention of Gilead or Bashan in relation to Havvoth-jair are to be understood as restrictive clauses rather than appositive ones. That is, it is very possible that the references to “Havvoth-jair in Gilead” indicate that the author is specifically talking about Jair’s settlements in Gilead, not the ones in Bashan, whereas the mention of “Havvoth-jair in Bashan” is indicating that the author is referring to the settlements in Bashan, not the ones in Gilead. Two other lesser known terms associated with this region are the land of Tob (Judges 11:3-5; 2 Samuel 10:6-8), likely located just south of Bashan, and Hauran, mentioned only in Ezekiel 47:16-18, which formed the southeast extreme of Bashan.
Ahab’s Wars with Aram
Though righteousness often results in worldly blessings (see much of the book of Proverbs), the Bible’s judgment of Ahab as one of the most wicked kings in Israel’s history shows that worldly success cannot always be regarded as a measure of one’s favor before God, because Ahab was also one of the strongest kings in Israel’s history up to that time. Ahab became king after the death of his father Omri, who had usurped the throne and began to reassert Israel’s dominance in the region (1 Kings 16:8-28). Ahab married Jezebel, the daughter of the Sidonian king Ethbaal, and adopted her zealous worship of Baal, even building a temple to Baal in the new capital of Samaria (1 Kings 16:29-33). The Bible devotes three full chapters to recounting several other wicked acts by Ahab and his confrontations with the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 17-19). The Bible also notes that Ahab rebuilt the city of Jericho at the cost of his firstborn son and his youngest son, just as Joshua prophesied (Joshua 6:26; 1 Kings 16:34). Yet the Bible also notes that Ahab engaged Ben-hadad II of Aram in multiple battles (1 Kings 20-22), and Assyrian records note that Ahab fought in a great battle that took place at the city of Qarqar north of Israel (853 B.C.). In that battle a coalition of about a dozen nations (including Israel) fought against the Assyrians and ultimately stopped them from advancing further south into the Levant for several years. Ahab may have also recovered land in northern Israel taken by Aram during Baasha’s reign (1 Kings 15:9-24; see 1 Kings 20:26-34). Archaeological evidence suggests that Ahab fortified Megiddo and Hazor during his reign as well. Soon after the battle at Qarqar Ahab was killed while fighting alongside King Jehoshaphat of Judah to recapture Ramoth-gilead from Aram (1 Kings 22).
