The history of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their kings is a story of epic heroes and villains. David was the God-chosen savior who fought giants, and the remarkable individual who inspired the world's greatest artists to create their immortal sculptures and paintings. Solomon is regarded as the author of many of the proverbs that we still use-and the ancient sources say he was married to seventy foreign princesses. The protagonists of this book also include famous rulers of the ancient world, such as Queen of Sheba and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

You will learn how David unified the nation, but you'll also find out about his dark secret and its terrible consequences. You will discover all about the golden age of Solomon, the building of his Temple, and the legendary Ark of the Covenant-and you'll also learn how ruthless he was toward his subjects near the end of his reign. In addition to that, you will get to know the roots of the conflict between the Israelite tribes, why the Jewish kingdom had split in two, and how the two disunited kingdoms fell to the mighty empires of Egypt and Babylon.

This book covers a timespan of about half a millennium. The first couple of chapters, which cover Israel's shift from tribal government to a centralized monarchy, tell the stories of the people and events initially described in the two Books of Samuel (Sam. 1 and 2). The rest of the book follows the storyline of the two Books of Kings (Kings 1 and 2).

In The Kings of Israel and Judah: A Captivating Guide to the Ancient Jewish Kingdom of David and Solomon, the Divided Monarchy, and the Assyrian and Babylonian Conquests of Samaria and Jerusalem, you will discover topics such as

• The Last Judges
• Give Us a King
• A Boy from Bethlehem
• Saul Has a Rival
• King David
• David's Downfall
• The Horrors
• King Solomon
• Divided Monarchy
• The Kings of the Divided Monarchy Until the Fall of Israel
• Ten Lost Tribes: The Destruction and Fall of Israel
• Judah's Resistance and Reforms
• The Fall of Jerusalem and the End of the Kingdom of Judah
• And much, much more