THE STREAM OF TIME

Panel VI in its print form — parchment, as the wall chart will carry it. The same verified entries drive the interactive chart; nothing can say one thing here and another there.

THE EVENTS OF THE PANEL

1. The Kingdom Rent in Two — 930 BC

2. The Golden Calves at Bethel and Dan — 930 BC

3. The Man of God at Bethel — 930 BC

4. Shishak Spoils the Temple — 925 BC

5. Asa's Reformation — 900 BC

6. Zerah the Ethiopian Defeated — 897 BC

7. Samaria Founded — 880 BC

8. Ahab Marries Jezebel — 874 BC

9. Elijah Shuts Heaven — 874 BC

10. Naboth's Vineyard — 863 BC

11. Fire on Mount Carmel — 857 BC

12. The Still Small Voice at Horeb — 857 BC

13. Ahab Falls at Ramoth-gilead — 853 BC

14. Elisha Takes the Mantle — 852 BC

15. The War with Moab — 852 BC

16. Naaman Healed — 845 BC

17. Famine and Flight at Samaria — 841 BC

18. Jehu Anointed; Ahab's House Falls — 841 BC

19. Syria's Host Blinded and Fed — 840 BC

20. Joash Crowned in the Temple — 835 BC

21. Elisha Dies; Joash Weeps — 798 BC

22. Joash of Israel's Thistle Parable — 796 BC

23. Amaziah Taken; Jerusalem's Wall Broken — 790 BC

24. The Dead Man at Elisha's Bones — 790 BC

25. Jeroboam II Restores Israel's Coast — 780 BC

26. The Eclipse That Anchors the Panel — 763 BC

27. Jonah Preaches at Nineveh — 760 BC

28. Uzziah Stricken with Leprosy — 750 BC

29. Isaiah Sees the Lord — 740 BC

30. The Syro-Ephraimite War; Immanuel's Sign — 734 BC

31. Galilee and Gilead Carried Captive — 734 BC

32. Ahaz Calls in Assyria; Damascus Falls — 732 BC

33. Samaria Falls; Israel Carried Away — 722 BC

34. Hezekiah's Reformation and Passover — 715 BC

35. Hezekiah Shows Babylon His Treasure — 712 BC

36. Isaiah Walks Barefoot Against Egypt — 711 BC

37. Ashdod Taken by Tartan — 711 BC

38. Hezekiah's Tunnel and the Pool of Siloam — 705 BC

39. Sennacherib Before Jerusalem — 701 BC

40. Lachish Taken — Carved at Nineveh — 701 BC

41. Manasseh Fills Jerusalem with Blood — 660 BC

42. Manasseh Carried to Babylon — 648 BC

43. Jeremiah Called in Josiah's Thirteenth Year — 627 BC

44. The Book of the Law Found — 622 BC

45. Josiah's Passover and Covenant — 622 BC

46. Huldah's Oracle — 622 BC

47. Josiah Slain at Megiddo — 609 BC

48. Carchemish: Babylon Takes the North — 605 BC

49. Daniel and the Three Carried to Babylon — 605 BC

50. Jehoiakim Rebels; Jeremiah's Roll Burned — 601 BC

51. Jehoiachin and the Artificers Carried Away — 597 BC

52. The Siege of Jerusalem Begins — 588 BC

53. Jeremiah in the Dungeon and the Pit — 588 BC

54. Jerusalem Falls; the Temple Burned — 586 BC

55. Gedaliah Set Over the Remnant; Murdered — 586 BC

56. Ezekiel Among the Captives (the panel's edge) — 586 BC

MARGINAL NOTES

How this panel's dates are built — The divided-kingdom years are worked from the synchronisms of Kings and Chronicles — 'in the X year of A king of Judah began B to reign in Israel' — into one consistent set. Systems differ by a few years in the 800s; the panel prints one set and says so, rather than pretending a precision Scripture itself does not claim.

The Bur-Sagale eclipse (763 BC) — Assyria's eponym lists note an eclipse in the year of Bur-Sagale, governor of Guzana — 15 June 763 BC by computation. It is the anchor from which Assyrian regnal years, and so this panel's cross-dates, are counted.

Reading the prophets' lane — The gold thread above the kingdoms carries the prophets as diamonds. Each hairline drops to the king the prophet spake to — in the interactive chart, tap a diamond and the pair lights together.

Qarqar, 853 BC — Shalmaneser III's annals claim a great battle at Qarqar against a coalition of twelve kings, 'Ahab the Israelite' contributing 2,000 chariots — the largest chariot force listed. Scripture does not mention the battle; history and the Bible here run side by side, not against each other.

Jehu on the Black Obelisk — Shalmaneser's obelisk shows 'the tribute of Jehu, son of Omri' — a king of Israel bowing before Assyria, carved in the victor's capital. 'Son of Omri' is Assyria's name for Israel's kings, from the dynasty that founded Samaria.

The Lachish reliefs — Sennacherib chose Lachish, not Jerusalem, for his palace's great carved campaign — the deliverance of Jerusalem is the story his sculptors passed over. The reliefs stand in the British Museum; the siege ramp stands at Lachish.

The Siloam inscription — Found in Hezekiah's tunnel in 1880, the inscription tells how the two cutting teams heard each other's voices through the rock and met, axe against axe, with the water flowing from the spring to the pool.

The Mesha Stele — Moab's king Mesha carved his own account of throwing off Israel — 'Omri king of Israel oppressed Moab many days' — naming Israel's God as he goes. The enemy's stone confirms the war of 2 Kings 3 from the other side of the hill.

Who the Samaritans were — The settlers Assyria planted in Israel's land, taught by a captured priest at Bethel, feared the LORD and served their own gods. From that mixture come the Samaritans of the Gospels — and the woman at Jacob's well asking, 'How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me?'

The 'lost' tribes — Carried to Assyria in 722, the northern tribes pass out of the chart's sight — not out of God's. Anna of the tribe of Aser still worships in the temple at the Lord's birth (Luke 2:36), and James writes 'to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad.'

A note on overlapping reigns — Several bars overlap: Uzziah and Jotham, Hezekiah and Manasseh, Jeroboam II and his father. These are co-regencies — father and son reigning together — which the synchronisms require and the panel draws honestly rather than forcing the kings into single file.

Syria, Aram, Damascus — One people under three names: Aram is the land, Damascus its capital, Syria the name the chart inherits from the older histories. Ben-hadad ('son of Hadad') is a throne name borne by more than one of its kings.

A talent of silver — Menahem's thousand talents, raised at fifty shekels from each of Israel's 60,000 men of wealth, is about thirty-four tons of silver — the price of one year of Assyria's patience.

The shadow on the dial — Hezekiah's sign — the shadow going ten degrees backward on the dial of Ahaz — is set in the palace court of this panel's Jerusalem. The chart marks the reign; the wonder belongs to Isaiah 38 and 2 Kings 20, where the reader door leads.

Houses of the high places — Jeroboam's priests were 'of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi' — and the true Levites of the north came south to Rehoboam, strengthening Judah. Every northern king is measured by whether he 'departed not from the sins of Jeroboam' — all of them kept the calves.

The women of this panel — Jezebel drives Baal's worship and Naboth's murder; Athaliah nearly extinguishes David's line; Maachah is deposed for idolatry; Huldah speaks the oracle that frames Josiah's reform; and a Shunammite woman's faith raises her son. The panel's story cannot be told without them.

Why Samaria fell — in the text's own words — 2 Kings 17 gives the exile's sermon: they feared other gods, walked in the statutes of the heathen, built high places in all their cities, and the LORD removed Israel out of His sight. The panel's longest marginal note is that chapter — read it by the reader door.

Why Judah stands another century — Not Judah's goodness — Manasseh out-sins Israel — but David's lamp: 'for David's sake did the LORD his God give him a lamp in Jerusalem.' Judah falls at last for the same sins, with the same sermon, in 586.

Kings and Chronicles together — Kings tells this panel as prophecy fulfilled, Chronicles as worship kept or lost. Where a king looks thin in one book, read the other: Asa's wars, Jehoshaphat's choir, Joash's decline and Josiah's Passover all live chiefly in Chronicles.

The empires' true size — The streams' widths are prominence, not acreage: at its height Assyria ruled from Egypt to Persia, while Judah was smaller than some Assyrian provinces. The chart's point is the opposite of the map's — the small stream in the middle is the one the book is about.

Into the Exile — Panel VII opens where this one closes: a thin gold thread of Judah inside Babylon's great stream — Daniel at the king's table, Ezekiel by the river, and the decree of Cyrus already written in Isaiah two centuries before his birth (Isaiah 44:28).

In Adams's manner — Adams draws these same two centuries with Israel and Judah as twin streams ground between Assyria's rise and Babylon's. GTU's panel follows his grammar — braided streams, prophets against kings, dense margins — with its own drawing and its own dating notes.

Dates: Scripture-stated or Scripture-computed (from the synchronisms of Kings and Chronicles) stand in gold confidence; the nations’ dates are the standard reckoning. · Return to the interactive chart ›