Gen 12:7 The land lost

Gen 12:7   Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. (ESV)

At the end of Solomon's reign things went downhill and Israel gradually lost the land as it turned away from God. It was then ruled over by a long list of Empires. Here's a summary table plus some key points:

Empire	From	to
Assyrian	721	597
Babylonians	597	538
Persian	539	330
Macedonian(Hellenisitc/Greek)	330	63
Roman	63	330
Byzantine	330	634
Arabs	634	1199
Crusaders	1099	1291
Saladin and other Mamluks	1291	1516
the Ottoman Empire	1516	1918
British / European Colonialism	1917	1948

The following key points come mainly from (Who's promised land? Colin Chapman page 19-21).

The 10 northern tribes revolted against Rehoboam, Solomon's son, and set up their own capital in Samaria. Samaria was captured by the Assyrian empire in 722BC; large numbers of people were deported and many immigrants brought in. The region generally adopted the region of the Israelites but the Samarians, as they were called, were despised by the Southern kingdom which considered them no longer pure, both in ancestry and religion.

The Southern Kingdom itself managed to remained independent of Assyria but in 597AD Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon Empire took Jerusalem and deported the cream of its population. When the remaining Jews revolted the Babylonian army destroyed much of Jerusalem and exiled many of its people.

When Cyrus king of Persia captured Babylon he repatriated many of the Jews who began coming back in 537 BC under Zerubbabel (to rebuild the temple), with the last arriving 70 or 80 years later under Ezra and Nehemiah (to rebuild the city wall).

Alexander the Great conquered the coastal plains in 330BC but left Jerusalem alone. The Ptolemies took control of Palestine after the death of Alexander the great in 323BC. The Seleucids (of Syria) then took over and after a Jewish revolt an enraged Antiochus Epiphanes came down very hard on the Jewish people.

 

The Romans took over next in 63BC ruling through puppet kings like Herrod the great (37-4BC) and Roman procurators like Pontius Pilot (AD 26-36). The Jews finally revolted against the Romans in AD 66 but Rome re-captured Jerusalem in AD 70 and destroyed the temple. Another revolt in AD 132 was put down in AD 135 and the Jews were slaughtered and Emperor Hadrian turned Jerusalem into a Roman colony.

In AD 395 the Roman Empire was split in two with the eastern half, including Palestine,  known as the Byzantine empire (Emperor Constantinople had made Byzantium the new capital of the empire in AD 330 and modestly changed its name to Constantinople) . In 614 the Persians briefly retook Palestine, but the Byzantines regain control in AD 617.

In AD 634, two years after the death of the prophet Muhammad the Arabs invaded Palestine and took Jerusalem but did not expel or oppress the Jews and Christians there.

The crusades recaptured Jerusalem form the Muslims in 1099 and massacred the entire population, both Jewish and Muslim. Saladin and his armies recaptured Jerusalem in 1187 AD and the whole of Palestine in 1291. Other Mamluks (powerful Muslim salve-soldiers) ruled until 1516.

Under the Turks many Jews returned to Palestine and the Jewish population increased from 5% to 9%. 

I'll look at the more modern history tomorrow but before I finish I can't resist taking a brief look ahead to Daniel's knowledge of and interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Dan 2). The dream is of a statue with a gold head, silver chest and arms, bronze middle and thighs, iron legs and feet of iron and clay. A stone  "cut out by no human hand...struck the image on its feet of iron and clay" and smashed the statue to pieces. The interpretation is that Nebuchadnezzar and his kingdom is the head of gold. After him two inferior kingdoms will arise, and then a fourth will be strong but will be divided having strength and weakness in it. It has been suggested that a good fit for this is:

Silver : Medo-Persian Empire which started with Cyrus conquering Babylon in 539

Bronze : Greeko - Macedonian established by Alexander the great in 530

Iron : Roman Empire (some suggest it has a political and religious leg!)

The mixed feet are variously interpreted.  One view is that the clay is the church that grows up in the Roman empire but I'm not sure what the relationship of the church to the rock is in that case. Another view is that it is the breakup of the Roman empire and another that it is the various nations and states in Europe since the Roman Empire. I'm not yet persuaded it's all that clear. Maybe I'll look at it again when I get to Daniel.