From Solomon to Exile:
The Tragedy of Israel & Judea’s Kings and the Prophetic Cry
The Bible does not flatter its heroes. If you’re reading it as a book of moral examples, you’re going to be shocked. If you’re reading it to find the pure and noble lineage of a holy people, you’re going to be disturbed. Because once David dies and Solomon takes the throne, the tragedy begins to unfold—and it doesn’t let up.
Solomon builds the Temple, yes—but at what cost? He also builds altars to foreign gods. He marries empire. He taxes the people. He expands Jerusalem, not as Zion, but as a royal estate. He becomes Pharaoh in reverse. And God splits the kingdom after him.
This is how the story of the kings begins: not with majesty, but with division. Jeroboam takes the north and builds his own religious system to keep power. Rehoboam in the south rules Judah with arrogance. And the prophetic silence after Solomon is broken not by priests or scribes—but by Elijah, a man who lives in exile even within the land. Elijah’s fire from heaven is not just a miracle—it is a warning: Israel is drifting.
From this point forward, the Bible reads like a descent. King after king fails. Occasionally a light shines—Hezekiah, Josiah—but the pattern is clear: Israel cannot govern itself. Not spiritually, not politically. The kings fail, and the people follow.
And this is where the prophets step in.
The prophets are not fortune tellers. They are covenant prosecutors. They do not preach private religion—they bring lawsuits in the heavenly court. Hosea marries a prostitute to embody Israel’s infidelity. Amos cries out from the fields for justice. Micah strips the high places bare and dares to say the Temple is not safe. Isaiah walks naked to declare Judah’s shame. Jeremiah is thrown into a pit. Ezekiel eats exile as bread and sees visions of alien glory.
These are not gentle devotional voices. These are voices of judgment. They are calling out not just sins, but distortions—distortions of Torah, distortions of inheritance, distortions of justice. They speak against kings and priests alike. They warn that exile is not an accident. It is judgment. And not just geopolitical judgment, but divine judgment.
Jerusalem is not holy because it’s Jerusalem. The Temple is not safe because it’s the Temple. The prophets remind us that covenant is not magic. It is not nationalism. It is not DNA. It is obedience. It is justice. It is Torah.
And the exile comes.
Did you notice a few minutes in the name Muhammedim 😬
Assyria wipes out the north. Babylon crushes the south. Jerusalem burns. The Temple falls. Zion is a ruin. The glory departs. And still, the prophets speak.
Habakkuk stands watch and asks: why? How can God use the wicked to judge the righteous? And God answers: you haven’t seen wicked yet. But even then, the righteous will live by faith.
Zephaniah declares the Day of the Lord—already burning, already begun.
Ezekiel watches the heavens open in Babylon, because exile doesn’t silence God. In fact, exile clarifies who is really listening.
And Daniel—Daniel sees that this is just the beginning. Empire will rise and fall again and again. The beasts will not stop. Babylon will become Persia, then Greece, then Rome, then what comes after. And the Son of Man will come not merely to take back Jerusalem, but to sit at the right hand of power.
What the prophets make clear is this: the Bible is not Israel’s success story. It is Israel’s judgment story. It is God’s indictment against every attempt to create holiness without Him.
The exile is not a plot twist. It is the center of the story. And if we don’t read it that way, we will never understand Jesus. We will mistake Him for a teacher, a healer, or a martyr. We will miss that He is the Judge of Israel, the Prophet greater than Moses, the Exile come home, the Temple not made with hands.
We will miss that the prophets saw Him. Not clearly, perhaps, but in fire, in whisper, in dreams, in mourning.
And if you want to read the Bible rightly, you must listen to the prophets. Read them not as sideshows, but as the main act. They are the soul of the Tanakh. They interpret the kings. They interpret the exile. They prepare the world for the return of the Presence.
Don’t rush through them. Don’t read them like riddles to solve. Read them like lawsuits, like psalms, like tears written in stone.
The prophets didn’t fail. The kings did.
The prophets weren’t marginal. They were central.
And in the middle of their judgment, they always left a window open. A remnant. A voice crying out. A new covenant.
Not yet, but coming.
