The Southern Kingdom

Meanwhile in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, Isaiah the prophet tried to persuade the king to take no part in wars with other nations.  He told the people that they should leave the future to God and trust in him.  “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength”, he said (NRSV, Isaiah 30:15).  Some of them listened to Isaiah but most of them wanted the nation to be very powerful and to fight against the Assyrians.  Isaiah, however, knew that God wanted them to remain quietly in Palestine without getting mixed up in other people’s affairs.

At first the king did not listen to Isaiah and instead he too tried to get help from Egypt when the Assyrians came south, but it was no good and the enemy took the gold away from the Temple in Jerusalem.

The next year they returned and surrounded the city, but this time the king went into the Temple.  There the king spread out the letter which the Assyrian general had sent him calling on him to surrender, and the king prayed to God to help him.  That night a plague swept through the Assyrian army and it went back home. Thus Isaiah was proved right after all (2 Kings 19; Isaiah 37).

The people of Judah were more religious than those of Israel, but even so they, too, got into bad ways and thought that God did not care how they went on, although Isaiah, and Jeremiah after him, told them very plainly that he did.  However, they began to worship idols and their rulers lived just as bad lives as the people.  Soon the end came.

Assyria was defeated by another great nation, the Babylonians, who marched west.  The king of Judah at once took up arms, against the advice of Jeremiah, and Jerusalem was captured.  The Temple of Solomon was burnt to the ground and almost all the people were taken off to Babylon where the king of Babylon could keep his eye on them.