Kingdoms in Crisis: Vindicating the promise

Abstract

Abstract Archaeological excavations and surveys have made it clear that Jerusalem underwent a rapid urbanization, which began in the late eighth century. These demographic changes catapulted Jerusalem from a small isolated city into a major urban center. Jerusalem’s rapid growth was tied to two influxes of refugees. First, in the late eighth century, a large number of refugees fled south in the wake of Assyrian campaigns against the northern kingdom of Israel. These refugees were largely responsible for at least a fourfold increase in the size of the walled city of Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE. A second wave of refugees into the Jerusalem environs in the early seventh century BCE, following the campaign of Sennacherib against Judah, further expanded the size of Jerusalem itself, as well as the density of agricultural settlements in its immediate vicinity. Accompanying these rapid demographic changes was political centralization. In the words of Johannes Pedersen, “When the northern kingdom collapsed, Jerusalem became the pivot round which everything turned.” This insight begs for further elaboration.