I have been trying to synchronize the books of Kings in the Bible with Israel Finkelstein’s opinion that the original kingdom of David and Solomon was the Temple Mound and nothing more before the 9th century, and that the City of David was included to Jerusalem only on the 9th century, possibly the second part of the century.
In the Kings David and several other Davidic kings are buried in the City of David. Thus, it would be natural to assume that Jerusalem did include the City of David in the time of David, but if so, then David should have lived in the 9th century. This seems possible by slight modifications to the years of reign in Kings. Both David and Solomon are said to have reigned 40 years. This 40 years is a symbolic figure, which also appears as a symbolic time in the Mesha Stele. It basically means a long reign and could be e.g. 20 years. There is also one additional king of Judea whose reign may be given as too long, Asa, who reigned 41 years. The first Davidic kings have the reigns: David (40 years), Solomon (40), Rehoboam (17), Abiah (3), Asa (41), Josaphat (25), Joram (8) and Ahaziah (2 years). After Ahaziah the Davidic line may have stopped as Ahaziah’s mother, daughter of Omri, Athaliah tried to exterminate the Davidic lineage. Kings claim that the son of Ahaziah (and grandson of Athaliah) survived, but this may naturally be state propaganda to keep the Davidic lineage alive. We cannot say if the baby son Jehoash did survive under Athaliah’s reign, considered tyranny in Kings, or if Jehoash was somebody else. Fortunately this is of no concern to me here.
There is an absolute date that can be used to set the reigns of these kings: in 853 BC king Shalmaneser of Assyria fought Canaanite states (including the Kingdom of Israel and under the leadership of Damascus) in the battle of Karhar on the Orontes rives in Syria. At this time the king of Israel was Ahab, the son of Omri. As Assyrian documents mention the House of Omri several times, we can consider the chronology of Israel (the Northern kingdom) given in Kings as correct. Thus, there were the following kings of Israel: Jerobeam (20 years), Nadab (2 years), Baesa (24 years), Eala (2 years), Simri (7 days), Omri (12 years, first Omri and Tibnin), Ahab (22 years), Ahaziah (2 years), Joram (12 years) and Jehu. These sum to 84 years.
Jehu killed all men of the House of Omri, and he also killed Ahaziah. Jehu was made the king of Israel and told to exterminate the House of Omri by the prophet Elisha. The death of Ahaziah was the reason why Athaliah wanted to exterminate the House of David. The logic in this is not clear to us, but if could be as follows: Judea was at this time a vassal of Israel and an Israelian princess Athaliah was married to the Judean king. Then the House of Omri in Israel was exterminated. Thus, because of the marriage Judean kings could claim the throne of Israel. If Athaliah believed that Elisha made Jehu the king because he wanted to help Judea (the Jerusalem temple cult), then killing the House of Omri was a Judean plot to capture the throne of Israel. Then it was logical to exterminate the House of David in order to abort the Judean plan. A simple objection to this logic is that Elisha made Jehu the king, so he did not help Judeans. But this objection is incorrect: Elisha a bit later made Hazael the king of Aram and told Hazael to attack Israel. Thus, Hazael destroyed Jehu, and he also destroyed the Philistean city Gad. Both Israel and Gad were enemies of Judea. When Hazael destroyed these enemies, Judea not only got away of being Israel’s vassal but could expand West as there was no power, like Gad of Israel, to stop it. Thus, Judea did greatly gain from the actions of Elisha.
These actions of Elisha are what made me to look for the Hidden Hand in Judea. But let us briefly comment the original problem. By downscaling the reigns of David, Solomon and Asa form 40 years to about 20 years, we can shift the reign of David from 1010-970 BC to 950-910 BC, which then matches very well with Israel Finkelstein’s views of when the City of David was built. Moving David 60 years forward leaves time for the reign of Saul in the Benjamite district, keeps Jerusalem in the Jebusite hands a bit longer, and leaves time for the war of Israelites against Benjamites, who at that time were allied with Jebusites but got decimated in the war. With quite minor changes the time of Judges can be compressed to the period between the Merneptah inscription and David. The dates for the Early Exodus would come from Jebusite memory of Hyksos expulsion, while there were later exoduses, a very late one in the 7th century, or what Isaiah 19:19-22 may have meant.
But the more interesting issue is the Hidden Hand. It would be the hand of the prophets. Judea was not ruled by the king or by the high priest. The king had to follow the orders given by the true prophet. In Saul’s case, Samuel was the true prophet of YHWH and Samuel told Saul, as a command of God, to exterminate the Amalekites totally: men, women, children, livestock. Saul spared some livestock and for that reason Samuel installed a new king, David. The king could not even question the commands of the true prophet. The case with Elisha is very similar: Elisha did not approve the kings of the House of Omri, so he ordered the family to be exterminated, but by a twisted morality he also ordered the exterminator Jehu to be exterminated by Hazael, and Hazael naturally also was to be punished. We see here the pattern of a weak country, like Judea, using a stronger country, like Aram, to fight its wars, like against Israel and Gad. This pattern appeared often in the Canaan city states in the second and first millennium BC, it is not a Judean peculiarity. A Judean peculiarity may be that the real ruler is a prophet. Usually crooked plots were made by kings. These prophets of the Bible, like Moses, Eliah and Elisha, were magic workers. This is an important thing, as the tradition of the Hidden Hand may have continued among the magic workers, not in king’s courts or in the temple.
There are many miraculous events in the Bible, like the Deluge, Sodom and Gomorrah, miracles of Moses, Eliah and Elisha, but if we leave these tales, that cannot be verified, aside, I found four interesting cases. One is the case of Elisha making Jehu and Hazael kings with the commands to destroy enemies of God. While the role of Elisha is verified solely by the Bible, there are historical evidences that support it. The Assyrian inscription by Shalmaneser III was already mentioned, the other two are the Mesha Stele and the Tel Dan Stele. It is historically proven that Hazael did attack Israel and Gad and Israel and Judea did attack Moab, and the kings are correct and as in the Bible.
The second interesting event occurred in 701 BC when Hezekiah of Judah had rebelled against Assyria and Assyrian troops laid a siege around Jerusalem. Assyrian troops were killed by plague. This event is verified by Herodotos using an Egyptian source. According to Kings prophet Isaiah had predicted that Assyrians will not take the city. The question of the plague is whether Judean prophets spread it on purpose on Assyrians. This is not to say that Jews spread plague, which is false. It is whether Moses hit Egypt with ten plagues and whether the Medieval kabbalistic curse of ten plagues includes plague, as they did. In Habakkuk 3:5 there is this verse of YHWH “Plague went before him; pestilence followed his steps”, which clearly associates Jahwe with plague. My guess is that the prophet did spread the plague to Assyrians in 701 BC. That was another instance of the Hidden Hand.
The third interesting case is the fall of Assyria in 612 BC. Babylon and Medes conspired a rebel against Assyria. It was clear already from 626 BC (when Babylonia broke loose form Assyria) that the Assyrian Empire will collapse. Judean prophet Nahum predicts the fall of Assyria to Babylon. This prophecy can be timed between 660 BC (as it mentions the fall of Thebes in 660 BC to Assyrians) and 587 BC (as Nahum does not know that Judea fell to Babylon). However, it is a prophecy only if it was made between 660 BC and 627 BC as otherwise it was just observation. We do not need to know if Nahum predicted this event. It is enough to know that Josiah of Judea tried to stop Necho II from joining the war on the Assyrian side in 609 BC. Thus, Judea was on the Babylonian side and a part of this conspiracy. That is not surprising, as since Hezekiah’s time Judea had conspired against Assyria and had contacts with Babylonian king aspirant Merodah-baladan. Thus, there was a conspiracy and Judea was included in it, but I cannot show the Hidden Hand. Habakkuk predicts that Babylon will fall, but the prediction is so vague as not to give reasons to suspect any covered actions.
The last interesting event I mention is the fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great in 639 BC. There are several conflicting accounts of this event. There was a battle in Opis that Persians won. After the defeat, the city of Sippar surrendered to Persians. Maybe Cyrus lowered the water level in the river flowing through Babylon by digging trenches in the river Gyndes. People in the city were having a festival. Persians took the city by a surprise attack with some resistance and some loss of life. Daniel is said to have predicted the event, but the Book of Daniel is not old enough. Earlier historians liked to point at the Prince Belshazzar in Daniel as an error since the king of Babylon was Nabodius, but Daniel is correct here: Belshazzar was in charge of the city. Yet, the attacking king was Cyrus the Great with Gobryas as the general and Gubaru/Ugbaru as the first governor. In Daniel the attacking king is Darius the Mede, which seems to be confusion with Darius the Great. The Book of Daniel most probably was augmented. The last version is usually dated to 167 BC, but I prefer to date it to 35 BC as it seems to refer to the sea battle between Octavian and Marc Anthony. In this fourth event in my list I cannot find a convincing case for a Judean Hidden Hand. Yet, later, in Spain, Jews did help Muslim invaders to take cities by opening the gates.
There are many ways a prophecy can be fulfilled. The whole story may be simply a tale, or it was a coincidence, or it was just an educated guess, or there was the hand of God. Or the event was arranged by the Hidden Hand, which in these situations is usually the hand of a miracle maker, a prophet of Messianic inspirations. I think it is reasonable to assume that e.g. Jacob Frank did try to make political plots of the Hidden Hand type and they had a role in the first partition of Poland. It certainly is correct to say that at some point in history Freemasons made this type of plots. The hand of God is difficult to detect in the books of Kings in the Bible, but there may be some cases where the Hidden Hand can be suspected. That would be a party that is not the king or the priest, wanting to get other countries to do their wars e.g. by bribing, as was the Canaanite way, a Messianic party wanting to fulfill the end of the time prophecies. There are these beautiful prophecies in the Bible, like Zechariah 14:12 “And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.” and such beautiful poetry like Psalm 137:9 “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” Because this is its true character of the religion of loving your neighbor as yourself and God above all: loving your neighbor means here advancing the interests of your tribe and loving God means here obeying blindly the commands of a mad prophet who claims to hear the words of God, in the Jehu episode Elisha is told to be a mad man.