Episode 7 - The Kingdom of Israel

<p>Episode 7 -  The Kingdom of Israel</p><p><br></p><p>Hi, my name is Clayton Mills.  Welcome to ‘A Short Walk through our Long History’ - a podcast where we look at the events of history, and try to see how those events shaped our modern world. </p><p><br></p><p>Welcome to Episode 7 -  The Kingdom of Israel.  Back in Episode 5, I mentioned that Israel had an outsized influence on the history of the Western world, considering its size and significance in Ancient history.  If you were able to go back in time to the ancient world, and gone to visit someone in some other part of the Mediterranean, like Greece, and asked them about Israel, they would have said, ‘Who?’</p><p><br></p><p>Israel was really pretty insignificant in the ancient world, to be honest.  It only really matters to the affairs of the great nations because it’s occasionally in the way, kind of like my small dog Chipper is often in the way when I’m trying to go to the kitchen.  Assyria wants to attack Egypt, and on their way to the kitchen, I mean to Egypt, they have to go through Israel.  </p><p><br></p><p>Later Babylon comes, and again, on their way to Egypt, Israel is in the way.  </p><p><br></p><p>Despite being tiny, and weak, and strategically not that important, and not having a lot of resources or people, Israel manages to survive, when a lot of the other nations around them do not.  Moab?  Gone.  Edom?  Gone.  Philistine?  Gone.  But Israel manages to stay around, and is still alive and kicking when it’s conquered by Rome in 63 BC.  We will come back to that conquering in a bit, but for now, let’s take a look at what might have been the Golden Age of Israel:  the Kingdom of David and Solomon.   </p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>After the exodus from Egypt, Israel had been a loose collection of tribes, living in land that they had taken from other tribes.  Two things to mention here:  First, territory and land ownership were really different back in the ancient days.  Today, we kind of see ownership as this cut-and-dried thing:   I own th