Tanach Thoughts

As a continuation of my recent post on the rise of Omri and the special trait of his house, I noticed that this is how Yehu killed the descendants of Achav: Divide and conquer. In Kings 2:9:21-24 , Yehu approaches both King Yehoram, son of Achav and King Achazyah, son of Atlayah, daughter or sister of Achav and Yehoram, son of Yehoshafat. It may be understood from the verses that Yehu first barged towards Yehoram, cursing him, as though he did not notice Achazyah. This makes Yehoram conclude that Achazyah was betraying him and shouts at him "Treason, Achazyah!" before he is slaughtered by Yehu. Yehu then gives chase to Achazyah and slaughters him as well ( ibid. 27 ). Next he slays the 70 other sons of Achav ( ibid. 10:1-11 ). Finally, he kills the 42 kinsmen of Achazyah ( ibid. 10:13-14 ). All of this spilling of blood was appranetly caused by one man. The various branches of the House of Achav could have taken him on, but they were ill-prepared and divided (in some cases, g...

*For those anxiously anticipating the continued adventures of the Danites (not) at sea, that will be B"H a later post, some time.  Besides for exams, I also need to hand in my first academic paper, for my academic writing course. The topic I'm researching is whether the Levitical Cities may have also been border-defense cities. Naturally, part of the research includes attempting to identify the locations of the cities and examining any archeological evidence uncovered so far. Which brings me to the topic of this post: The list of the cities appears in two places: Once in Yehoshua 21 and once in Chronicles 1:6 . The lists are not exactly the same and there are many theories on why this is so, which we won't get into now. My focus in this paper is the cities given by the Tribe of Yissachar. The list in Yehoshua reads :  Kishyon, Dovrat, Yarmut and Ein Ganim, while the list in Chronicles reads : Kadesh, Dovrat, Ramot and Anem. Once again, there are different theories on the ...