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 The tribes of Juda and Benjamin remained faithful to King Roboam, his son, and formed the kingdom of Juda, the chief city of which was Jerusalem. The other ten tribes chose Jeroboam for their King, and made Samaria the capital of their kingdom, which from that time was called the kingdom of Israel. At the same time they abandoned the religion of their fathers, built a temple for themselves at Samaria, and introduced many kinds of the most abominable idolatry. God, therefore, delivered them into the hands of the pagan king, Salmanasar, who destroyed the kingdom of Israel for ever, and led the people to Ninive, into the Assyrian Captivity, about seven hundred years before Christ. The kingdom of Juda was also repeatedly chastised by God for its many transgressions. Nabuchodonosor (Nebuchadnezzar) II. took Jerusalem, pillaged the temple, and sent the sacred vessels and a large number of Jews to Babylon; and in 588 he entirely demolished the temple and the city, carried Sedecias, the last King of Juda, with the rest of the inhabitants, into the same Babylonian Captivity. But the kingdom of Juda was not destroyed for ever, like the kingdom of Israel, that had forsaken the religion of its fathers.

17. These severe judgments of God did not by any means overtake Juda suddenly and unexpectedly. Men