Introduction

The Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine offers a view of life in an ancient Near Eastern agricultural society. The exhibit is arranged in terms of the buildings - the houses - associated with the different levels of that society: family dwelling, palace and temple.

This arrangement parallels the ancients' own view of their social organization as a three-tiered hierarchy of nested households, where each level of the hierarchy was contained within the next higher level.

The people of Israel and Judah were members of tightly knit families and kin groups following an agrarian way of life. The patriarchal ideal had the male head of an extended family living together with his descendants and dependents in a large family compound. This was the biblical House of the Father, the basic unit of society and the focus of the social, economic and religious spheres of life.

The language of house and family described the higher levels of society as well. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah were characterized as the households of their kings. The House of the King, therefore, encompassed and included all the families in the kingdom. The expressions House of David for the southern kingdom of Judah and House of Omri for the northern kingdom of Israel described a social reality: these kingdoms were large families.

The king, however, did not sit at the top of the hierarchy. His house was part of the still greater House of Yahweh. Yahweh, the national deity, was the supreme patrimonial ruler and the ultimate father of all the children of Israel, who were bound to him by covenant.

Israel and Judah in the Iron Age

In archaeological terms The Houses of Ancient Israel: Domestic, Royal, Divine focuses on the Iron Age (1200-586 B.C.E.). Iron I (1200-1000 B.C.E.) represents the premonarchical period. Iron II (1000-586 B.C.E.) was the time of kings. Uniting the tribal coalitions of Israel and Judah in the tenth century B.C.E., David and Solomon ruled over an expanding realm. After Solomon's death (c. 930 B.C.E.) Israel and Judah separated into two kingdoms.

Israel was led at times by strong kings, Omri and Ahab in the ninth century B.C.E. and Jereboam II in the eighth. In the end, however, Israel was no match for expansionist Assyria. Samaria, the Israelite capital, fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E.

Judah was politically weaker than Israel. One of Judah's stronger kings, Hezekiah, tried to secure independence from Assyria at the end of the eighth century B.C.E., but his attempt ended in failure. The southern kingdom was ruled by the House of David until Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.

Map adapted by C. Haberl with NASA satellite imagery.