Sources: 1 Kings 12–2 Kings 17; Amos; Hosea; Assyrian annals of Sargon II.

The Northern Kingdom (Israel, Ephraim) split from Judah at Rehoboam’s succession (~922 BC) when Jeroboam I led a ten-tribe rebellion against the oppressive taxation that had built Solomon’s court. Jeroboam’s founding religious act — erecting golden calves at Bethel and Dan with the declaration “Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (1 Kgs 12:28) — deliberately echoes the golden calf at Sinai (Exod 32:4), using the same words. Whether intended as icons of YHWH or as alternative deities, the Deuteronomistic historian treats this as the primal sin from which every Northern king’s evaluation flows: “the sin of Jeroboam.” The Northern prophetic tradition is politically charged: Elijah’s confrontation with the Baal prophets on Carmel (1 Kgs 18) is a direct religious contest — 850 Baal prophets vs one YHWH prophet; Amos (~760 BC) delivers the first written prophetic indictment against social injustice; Hosea (~750 BC) uses the marriage metaphor for covenant relationship. Sargon II of Assyria conquers Samaria in 722 BC, deports the elite population to Assyrian cities and provinces, and resettles other peoples in Samaria. The ten tribes largely assimilate into their deportation contexts. What remains in the land becomes the mixed population whose distinct Yahwistic tradition will eventually be rejected by the Judahite returnees from Babylon.