Why were the Israelites strong after Solomon's death?

Answer 1

Answer

According to The Bible, Solomon had ruled the United Monarchy known as Israel so unwisely and imposed such swingeing taxes that the Israelites hoped for improvement under his son, Rehoboam. When Rehoboam vowed to continue to policies of his father, the Israelites rebelled and broke away to form a northern kingdom, which they called Israel. The much smaller southern kingdom that remained for Rehoboam became known as Judah.

A pradox of this story is that, although many years of grinding taxation had apparently reduced the Israelites to grinding poverty, their new king Jereboam was able to find sufficient gold to make two images of the golden calf, setting one up in Bethel and one in Dan. He made priests and ordained a national feast day to the god symbolised by these calves, and the people came to worship. This suggests a prosperous kingdom that could not only procure the necessary gold but could divert resources to the worship of new gods, all of which is contrary to everything that preceded this in the Bible.

According to the noted Israeli archaeologist, there never really was a United Monarchy - the two kingdoms were always separate, with their own customs, culture and separate dialects of the Hebrew language. Solomon was probably just a figure of legend, and the Israelites gradually grew more prosperous and militarily stronger than the Judahites because of Israel's greater size and more fertile environment.