The list of the exilarchs down to the end of the 9th century is given as follows in an old document " Mediæval Jewish Chronicles ," i. 196: " Bostanai, Hanina ben Adoi, Hasdai I, Solomon, Isaac Iskawi I, Judah Zakkai ( Babawai ), Moses, Isaac Iskawi II, David ben Judah, Hasdai II.

He had a close friendship with " Antoninus ", possibly Antoninus Pius, who would consult Rabbi Judah on various worldly and spiritual matters.

David, who was accepted as king by Judah alone, was meanwhile reigning at Hebron, and for some time war was carried on between the two parties.

# Abijah ( queen ), the daughter of Zechariah ( 2 Chronicles 29: 1 ), who married King Ahaz of Judah.

# Abijah ( king ) of the Kingdom of Judah, also known as Abijam ( אבים ' aḄiYaM " My Father is Yam "), who was son of Rehoboam and succeeded him on the throne of Judah.

His father, Aibo, was a brother of Chiyya, who lived in Palestine, and was a highly esteemed scholar in the collegiate circle of the patriarch Judah I.

However, it is also possible to divide the book into three parts rather than four by combining the sections treating David and Solomon, since they both ruled over a combined Judah and Israel, unlike the last section that contains the chronicle of the Davidic kings who ruled the Kingdom of Judah alone.

Letter of Artaxerxes to Ezra ( Artaxerxes ' rescript ): King Artaxerxes is moved by God to commission Ezra " to inquire about Judah and Jerusalem with regard to the Law of your God " and to " appoint magistrates and judges to administer justice to all the people of Trans-Euphrates — all who know the laws of your God.

It is difficult to describe the parties and politics of Judah in this period because of the lack of historical source, but there seem to have been three important groups involved: the returnees from the exile who claimed the reconstruction with the support of Cyrus I ; " the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin "; and a third group, " people of the land ," who seem to be local opposition against the returnees building the Temple in Jerusalem.

It derives its name from, and records the visions of, Jeremiah, who lived in Jerusalem in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BC during the time of king Josiah and the fall of the Kingdom of Judah to the Babylonians, and who subsequently went into exile in Egypt.

According to the book, the Prophet Jeremiah was a son of a priest from Anatot in the land of Benjamin, who lived in the last years of the Kingdom of Judah just prior to, during, and immediately after the siege of Jerusalem, culminating in the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the raiding of the city by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

As a consequence of Solomon's failure to stamp out the worship of gods other than Yahweh, the kingdom of David is split in two in the reign of his own son Rehoboam, who becomes the first to reign over the kingdom of Judah.

In Esther 2: 5 – 6, either Mordecai or his great-grandfather Kish is identified as having been exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BCE: " Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, among those taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah.

By the time Esther was written, the foreign power visible on the horizon as a future threat to Judah was the Macedonians of Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persian empire about 150 years after the time of the story of Esther ; the Septuagint version noticeably calls Haman a " bully " ( βουγαῖον ) where the Hebrew text describes him as an Agagite.

This theological viewpoint was also widespread among Judah ’ s neighbors of differing religions who believed the destruction of a particular city could be attributed to the city ’ s deity who was punishing the city for some communal sin or wrongdoing.

Deane and J. R. Thomson write this valid conclusion, “ The Book of Obadiah is occupied with one subject – the punishment of Edom for its cruel and unbrotherly love conduct towards Judah ...” One can link this idea of punishment to one of the major prophets “ Ezekiel ” who “... interprets the exile to Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem as deserved punishments for the sins of those who themselves committed them .” Verses 3-7 in Obadiah explain to the reader the reason for the punishment theme, “ Confidence in one ’ s power, intelligence, allies, or the topographical features of one ’ s territory is often mentioned as an attribute of those who foolishly confront the Lord and are consequently punished .” Although destruction is vital to understanding Obadiah, it is of note to understand the destruction being a consequence of action.

The first stage was the collection and arrangement of some spoken sayings of the historical Micah ( the material in chapters 1-3 ), in which the prophet attacks those who build estates through oppression and depicts the Assyrian invasion of Judah as Yahweh's punishment on the kingdom's corrupt rulers, including a prophecy that the Temple will be destroyed.

Rehoboam is reported to have fortified Tekoa along with other cities in Judah in 2 Chronicles 11: 5-6.

Sycamore figs grow at a low elevation, lower than the Tekoa of Judah, which is at a relatively high elevation of 850 metres ( overlooking both Jerusalem and Bethlehem ).

As it is with all nations that rise up against the kingdom of God, even Israel and Judah will not be exempt from the judgment of God because of their idolatry and unjust ways.

In the traditional literature he is referred to almost exclusively as Rav, " the Master ", ( both his contemporaries and posterity recognizing in him a master ), just as his teacher, Judah I, was known simply as Rabbi.

Biblical scholars believe Bethlehem, located in the " hill country " of Judah, may be the same as the Biblical Ephrath, which means " fertile ", as there is a reference to it in the Book of Micah as Bethlehem Ephratah.

In Hebrew the book is called Divrei Hayyamim ( i. e. " the matters the days "), based on the phrases sefer divrei ha-yamim le-malkhei Yehudah and " sefer divrei ha-yamim le-malkhei Israel " (" book of the days of the kings of Judah " and " book of the days of the kings of Israel "), both of which appear repeatedly in the Books of Kings.

# The remainder of 2 Chronicles ( chapters 10 – 36 ) is a chronicle of the kings of Judah to the time of the Babylonian exile, concluding with the call by Cyrus the Great for the exiles to return to their land.

( The Deuteronomist author may have used the then-recent 701 BCE campaign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Judah as his model ; the hanging of the captured kings is in accordance with Assyrian practice of the 8th century ).

God's commission to Joshua in chapter 1 is framed as a royal installation, the people's pledge of loyalty to Joshua as successor Moses recalls royal practices, the covenant-renewal ceremony led by Joshua was the prerogative of the kings of Judah, and God's command to Joshua to meditate on the " book of the law " day and night parallels the description of Josiah in 2 Kings 23: 25 as a king uniquely concerned with the study of the law — not to mention their identical territorial goals ( Josiah died in 609 BCE while attempting to annex the former Israel to his own kingdom of Judah ).

Tattenai, satrap over both Judah and Samaria, writes to Darius warning him that Jerusalem is being rebuilt and advising that the archives be searched to discover the decree of Cyrus.

Jerusalem is repopulated by the Jews living in the towns and villages of Judah and Benjamin.

Judah is one of several provinces within the larger satrapy ( a large administrative unit ) within the Persian empire.

At his own request Nehemiah is sent to Jerusalem as governor of Yehud, the official Persian name for Judah.

Of notable importance is Isaiah 7: 14, where the prophet is assuring king Ahaz that God will save Judah from the invading armies of Israel and Syria ; the sign that will prove this is the forthcoming birth of a child called Emmanuel, " God With Us ".

The epilogue, in which Judah is assigned a leadership role twice, implies pro-Judah political leanings on the part of the author.

According to the book of Ezra-Nehemiah they did so under the joint leadership of a descendant of the last king and the last High Priest, rebuilding the Temple and reconstituting Judah ( now called Yehud ) as a holy community ruled by priests.

There are still others who maintain that after Nebuchadnezzar had carried the beautiful youths of Judah to Babylon, he had them executed and their bodies mutilated, because their beauty had entranced the Babylonian women, and that it was these youths whom Ezekiel called back to life.

Judah at this time was a vassal of Assyria, but Assyrian power collapsed in the 630s, and in around 622 Josiah and the Deuteronomists, as the circle around him are called by modern scholars, launched a bid for independence expressed as loyalty to " Yahweh alone " and the law-code in the book of Deuteronomy, written in the form of a treaty between Judah and Yahweh to replace the vassal-treaty with Assyria.

Example: the sons of Judah are called Yehudi ( which is translated into Latin as Judaeus and into English as Jew.

This usually indicates that many sages taught so, or that Judah haNasi ( often called " Rabbi ") who redacted the Mishnah together with his academy / court ruled so.

Omri's rule over Israel was secure enough that he could bequeath his kingdom to Ahab, thus beginning a new dynasty ( sometimes called the Omrides ), and his descendants not only ruled over the kingdom of Israel for the next forty years, but also briefly over Judah.

The realm Rehoboam was left with was called Kingdom of Judah.

Solomon ( Šlomo ;, also colloquially: ; Solomōn ), according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah ( Hebrew ) in 2 Samuel 12: 25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah split ; following the split his patrilineal descendants ruled over Judah alone.

When the reformer King Hezekiah came to the throne of Judah in the late 8th century BCE, " He removed the high places, broke the sacred pillars, smashed the idols, and broke into pieces the copper snake that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

Both are called governors of Judah and are both credited with laying the foundation of the Temple.

Zech 3. 8 and 6. 12 refer to a man called “ The Branch .” In Zech 6, the Lord tells Zechariah to gather silver and gold from the returned exiles ( who had come back to Judah from Babylonia ), and to go to the house of Josiah son of Zephaniah ( members of the Davidic lineage ).

Finally 1 Esdras mentions a person called Sanabassar as the Governor of Judah and that it was he who laid the foundation for the first temple ( 1 Esd.

The Old Testament of the Christian Bible uses Hebrews and Jews interchangeably, in the Book Of Esther ( 2: 5 ) Mordechai the Benjamite is called a Jew, though he is not of the tribe of Judah.

The Lord called Jeremiah to prophetic ministry in about 626 BC, about one year after Josiah king of Judah had turned the nation toward repentance from the widespread idolatrous practices of his father and grandfather.

Sometimes called Rabbi Judah Nesi ' ah, and occasionally Rebbi like his grandfather.

But at the same time it is fair to consider the Mishnah of Judah ha-Nasi ( called simply " the Mishnah ") as derived from the school of Akiva ; and the majority of halakic Midrashim now extant are also to be thus credited.

The earliest known text related to Judaism which mentions a sign called the " Shield of David " is Eshkol Ha-Kofer by the Karaite Judah Hadassi, in the mid-12th century CE:

The setting is the Syro-Ephraimite War, 734 BCE, which saw Judah pitted against two northern neighbours, Israel ( called Ephraim in the prophecy ) and Syria ( also known as Aram or Aram-Damascus or Syria-Damascus ).

South of the neighborhood there are called, Hugo ( Inner Sunset only ), Irving, Judah, Kirkham, Lawton, Moraga, Noriega, Ortega, Pacheco, Quintara, Rivera, Santiago, Taraval, Ulloa, Vicente, Wawona, and Yorba.

In 1733, the musician and composer Handel composed an oratorio based on her life, called Athalia, calling her a " Baalite Queen of Judah Daughter of Jezebel.