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A single prophet against four hundred. That was the lineup on Mount Carmel, and Elijah liked his odds. The backstory is bleak. King Ahab had married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, k...
King Ahab wanted a vineyard. Its owner, Naboth, said no. That refusal ended with Ahab dead in his chariot, his blood licked by dogs exactly where the prophet said it would happen. ...
King Ahaziah fell through the lattice of his upper chamber and was badly injured. Instead of praying to the God of Israel, he sent messengers to consult the Fly, the god of Ekron. ...
Elisha inherited Elijah's mantle and immediately proved he was no lesser prophet. His miracles were stranger, more varied, and sometimes more violent than his master's. A widow of ...
Jehoram, king of Jerusalem, started his reign by murdering all his brothers. Then he married Athaliah, daughter of Ahab, and she taught him to worship foreign gods. It went downhil...
A one-year-old baby survived a massacre that wiped out the entire royal family of Judah. Athaliah, daughter of the infamous Ahab, heard that her brother Joram, her son Ahaziah, and...
Hazael, king of Syria, tore through the eastern territories of Israel like a brushfire. The lands of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh fell. Gilead and Bashan burned. And...
In the space of twenty years, the throne of Israel changed hands five times, and almost every transfer was soaked in blood. Zachariah, son of Jeroboam, lasted six months before his...
Nine hundred and forty-seven years after the Exodus from Egypt, the northern kingdom of Israel ceased to exist. Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, discovered that Hoshea, the last king ...
One hundred and eighty-five thousand soldiers died in a single night. That is how God answered Sennacherib, king of Assyria, when he broke his word to Hezekiah and sent an army to ...
King Josiah was eight years old when he inherited the throne of Judah. His grandfather Manasseh had been the worst king in the nation's history—a man who slaughtered prophets until...
The kingdom that Josiah rebuilt fell apart the moment he died. Josephus records that when Pharaoh Neco marched through Judah on his way to fight the Babylonians at the Euphrates, J...
Nebuchadnezzar had a dream so terrifying that when he woke up, he could not remember what he had seen—only the dread it left behind. He summoned every magician, astrologer, and wis...
Daniel was still a teenager when Nebuchadnezzar brought him to Babylon in chains. He and three companions from the royal family of Judah—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—were given B...
Daniel survived the fall of Babylon. When Darius the Mede took the kingdom, he elevated Daniel to the highest office in the empire—one of only three governors ruling over 360 provi...
In the first year of his reign, Cyrus king of Persia did something no conqueror had ever done: he freed an enslaved nation and paid to rebuild their God's house. Josephus explains ...
Three bodyguards of King Darius entered a contest that would decide the fate of the Jewish Temple. The king had fallen asleep after a great feast and woke unable to sleep again. He...
The Temple was rebuilt, but the real crisis was internal. Josephus records that when the returnees from Babylon laid the foundation, the Samaritans—descendants of foreigners whom A...
The story of Esther begins with a drunken king and a queen who said no. King Artaxerxes of Persia hosted a lavish feast—180 days of celebration for his court, then seven more days ...
The story takes its sharpest turn on a sleepless night. King Artaxerxes could not sleep, so he ordered his servants to read the royal chronicles aloud. They happened upon the entry...
Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world by age thirty, but Josephus tells a story about the one city he did not need to take by force. When Alexander marched on Jerus...
After Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE, his empire shattered into warring kingdoms. Ptolemy, son of Lagus, seized Egypt—and Jerusalem along with it. Josephus records that Ptolem...
The Tobiads were a Jewish family who became the most powerful tax collectors in the Ptolemaic Empire—and nearly destroyed Judea in the process. Josephus tells the story of Joseph b...
The crisis started from within. Josephus records that after the High Priest Onias III died, a power struggle erupted between his brothers. Jason and Menelaus each bribed the Seleuc...
In the village of Modin, a priest named Mattathias gathered his five sons and told them it was better to die for the laws of their country than to live in disgrace. When the king's...
After routing the Seleucid armies, Judas Maccabeus did not rest. Josephus records that the surrounding nations, alarmed by the sudden revival of Jewish power, attacked Jewish commu...
Demetrius I, a Seleucid prince who had escaped captivity in Rome, seized the Syrian throne and immediately turned his attention to Judea. Jewish collaborators, led by the corrupt H...
After Judas Maccabeus fell in battle, everything he had fought for nearly collapsed. Josephus opens Book XIII of his Antiquities with a bleak picture: the lawless and the disloyal ...
The Seleucid Empire was tearing itself apart, and Jonathan knew exactly how to exploit it. Josephus records that after Alexander Balas overthrew Demetrius I and claimed the Syrian ...
When Trypho murdered his brother Jonathan, Simon, the last surviving son of Mattathias, took command. He was the eldest of the five brothers and the only one still alive. Josephus ...
John Hyrcanus escaped his father's assassination and seized control of Jerusalem before his treacherous brother-in-law could reach it. But the early years of his reign were brutal....
When Aristobulus I died after just one year on the throne, his widow Salome Alexandra did something audacious. She released Aristobulus's brothers from prison, where he had kept th...
After defeating the rebellion, Alexander Jannaeus returned to Jerusalem and made his enemies pay in the most horrifying way possible. Josephus records the scene: Alexander captured...
In 63 BCE, two brothers tore Judea apart. Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, both sons of the Hasmonean queen Alexandra, fought each other for the throne. Hyrcanus was the elder and the hig...
The real power behind the Jewish throne in the first century BCE was not a Jew at all. Antipater, an Idumean whose family had converted to Judaism only a generation or two earlier,...
Julius Caesar did something remarkable for the Jews. In a series of decrees preserved by Josephus in his Antiquities (written c. 93 CE), the Roman dictator formally guaranteed Jewi...
Herod was twenty-five years old when his father Antipater handed him the governorship of Galilee. His first act was to hunt down a band of raiders led by a man named Hezekiah who h...
In 40 BCE, the Parthian Empire invaded the Roman East and everything Herod had built nearly collapsed overnight. Antigonus, the last surviving son of Aristobulus, allied with the P...
Herod returned from Rome with a crown but no kingdom. Antigonus, backed by the Parthians, controlled Jerusalem. It took Herod three years of brutal campaigning to claim what the Ro...
Herod had the throne, but the Hasmonean family still haunted him. His wife Mariamne was a Hasmonean princess. Her mother Alexandra was relentless in promoting Hasmonean claims. And...
Mariamne was everything Herod wanted and everything he feared. A Hasmonean princess of extraordinary beauty, she gave him legitimate connection to the dynasty he had overthrown. Jo...
Herod tore down the Second Temple and rebuilt it from scratch. Not because it was falling apart. Because it wasn't grand enough for him. According to Josephus in Antiquities XV, He...
Herod sent his sons to Rome for an education. They came home polished, handsome, and walking straight into the deadliest family feud in Jewish royal history. Alexander and Aristobu...
Antipater wanted the throne so badly he was willing to destroy every member of his own family to get it. And for a while, it worked. According to Josephus in Antiquities XVI, Antip...
Herod strangled his own sons. Both of them. On the same day. At Sebaste, the city where he had married their mother Mariamne twenty years earlier. According to Josephus in Antiquit...
Two Torah scholars convinced their students to tear a golden eagle off the Temple gate in broad daylight. Herod burned them alive for it. According to Josephus in Antiquities XVII,...
Herod died the way he lived: in agony, surrounded by plots, and trying to control what happened after he was gone. His body was rotting while he was still inside it. According to J...
The moment Herod was dead, the nation exploded. Three separate revolts broke out across the country before his sons could even settle who inherited what. According to Josephus in A...
