The sword had given him his crown, and the sword was henceforth the arbiter of his kingdom.

The conservative forces which were strong in Judah were absent in the north; there the army became more and more powerful, and its generals dethroned princes and established short-lived dynasties.
Northern Israel, moreover, was not homogeneous; the tribes on the two sides of the Jordan were never welded together like the inhabitants of Judah, and the divergence of interests that had once existed between them was never wholly forgotten.
Israel perished while Judah survived.

Dynasty after dynasty had arisen in it; its capital had been shifted from time to time; it did not even possess a religious centre.

Before a line of kings had time to win the loyalty of the people they were swept away by revolution, and the army became the dominating power in the state.

There was no body of priests to preserve the memory of the Mosaic Law and insist upon its observance, and the prophets who took their place protested in vain against the national apostasy.