Political interest now centres in the larger kingdom, called Israel.  Judah for a time passes out of sight, but is gradually enriched under the reigns of virtuous princes, who preserved the worship of the true God at Jerusalem.  Nations, like individuals, seldom grow in real strength except in adversity.  The prosperity of Solomon undermined his throne.  The little kingdom of Judah lasted one hundred and fifty years after the ten tribes were carried into captivity.

Yet what remained of power and wealth among the Jews after the rebellion under Jeroboam, was to be found in the northern kingdom.  It was still exceedingly fertile, and was well watered.  It was “a land of brooks of water, of fountains, of barley and wheat, of vines and fig-trees, of olives and honey.”  It boasted of numerous fortified cities, and had a population as dense as that in Belgium at the present time.  The nobles were powerful and warlike; while the army was well organized, and included chariots and horses.  The monarchy was purely military, and was surrounded by powerful nations, whom it was necessary to conciliate.  Among these were the Phoenicians on the west, and the Syrians on the north.  From the first the army was the great power of the state, its chief being more powerful than Joab was in the undivided kingdom of David.  He stood next after the king, and was the channel of royal favor.

The history of the northern kingdom which has come down to us is very meagre.  From Jeroboam to Ahab—­a period of sixty-six years—­there were six kings, three of whom were assassinated.  There was a succession of usurpers, who destroyed all the members of the preceding reigning family.  They were all idolaters, violent and bloodthirsty men, whom the army had raised to the throne.  No one of them was marked by signal ability, unless it were Omri, who built the city of Samaria on a high hill, and so strongly fortified it that it remained the capital until the fall of the kingdom.  He also made a close alliance with Tyre, the great centre of commerce in that age, and one of the wealthiest cities of antiquity.  To cement this political alliance, Omri married his son Ahab—­the heir-apparent to the throne—­to a daughter of the Tyrian king, afterward so infamous as a religious fanatic and persecutor, under the name of Jezebel,—­one of the worst women in history.

On the accession of Ahab, nine hundred and nineteen years before Christ, the kingdom of Israel was rapidly tending to idolatry.  Jeroboam had set up golden calves chiefly for a political end, but Ahab built a temple to Baal, the sun-god, the chief divinity of the Phoenicians, and erected an altar therein for pagan sacrifices, thus abjuring Jehovah as the Supreme and only God.  The established religion was now idolatry in its worst form; it was simply the worship of the powers of Nature, under the auspices of a foreign woman stained with every vice, who controlled her husband.  For Ahab himself was bad enough, but