To be torn in two

I m leteane | Friday April 19, 2013 00:00

The main apparent reason is that there would be no end of squabbles - and perhaps war - if nations and tribes were to trace their histories and lay claim to areas they once settled before disturbances like the mfecane and colonisation played their part.Additionally, just about all Bantu people are migrants into southern Africa, the indigenous people of which, ostensibly, are the Khoi-San people.  It is indeed very difficult, in reality, to pin any nation in Africa to a particular area. Territory was typically gained either by war, or colonisation, or pure displacement. A painful part of all this is that colonisation in southern African was not overly sensitive to the integrity of tribes and nations. Some were literally torn in two by colonial borders, the Barolong for instance. A new border separated their main settlement in Mahikeng from their arable lands (maismo), now the Barolong Farms. In worse scenarios, former kinsmen become polarised over time, and we saw an ugly version of this in the Bakgatla saga that unfolded recently. Effectively, certain sections of the South African Bakgatla wished to secede from their Botswana counterparts and cases had to be pleaded in court.

This week, we will examine how Israel was similarly torn into two by the apostasy of Jeroboam, the king of Israel who brought about the Lord's undimmed wrath. We will also take the opportunity to look at the term 'two' from Tswana language roots and continue to exhibit that it was an integral part of an ancient and long-forgotten protolanguage we all once spoke. This is just as the Old Testament - as well as independent Mesopotamian texts like Enmerkar and the Lords of Aratta - maintain. Indeed, in a prior article, I showed why the so-called Tower of Babel incident, properly understood in its entire 'mythical' context, shows all signs of having been an actual and historical event.

The English term 'two' relates to the Latin term duo. Does this have any semantic relation with Tswana? This can indeed be discerned when we realise that ma-duo means 'the fruit or result' - which is to say '[the production of] another discrete entity' such that two entities now exist: the action or seed, and the result or fruit. In Tswana, the number 'two' is bedi. In protolanguage terms the lexeme, or principal word-form, is peta which is also Sotho for 'repeat'. From this the variant term beta emerged, which effectively means a repeat [of something]. Bedi/pedi therefore relates to beta and peta. Peta also has the connotation of 'turning [at least] once over' and we can relate words like phetola (reply, turn over, change into another), 'petulant' (primary meaning: as in a child rolling over in a tantrum: [a] ipetola), and indeed 'repeat' itself. Speaking of showing of displeasure, it is now time to consider the consequences of the Lord's great anger with Jeroboam, the king who succeeded Solomon.

Last week we saw how the Lord limited the years of reign of David and Solomon, Jeroboam's predecessors, to forty years each in line with Numbers 14:34 (also Ezekiel 4:6). Furthermore, in punishment for Solomon's apostasy (his worship of other gods), the Lord decided to also remove ten of the twelve tribes of Israel from Solomon and hand them over to Jeroboam. When Solomon learnt of this intention, Jeroboam had to flee for his life. He went to Egypt where he was shielded by Shishaq/Shoshenq II, the grandson of the Shoshenq: the pharaoh of Libyan extraction who founded the Twenty-Second Dynasty after overthrowing Psusennes II (King David). 'Jeroboam', we noted in a prior article, was the Hebrew term for 'Horemheb' - which is Hore-mo-ho-boa: 'he who returned from far' in Egyptian.  Jeroboam did indeed return to claim the throne of Israel and this once-unified nation was torn in two. Rehoboam, son of Solomon, was left with two tribes of a new nation called 'Judah', and he ruled from the old capital of Jerusalem (the curious similarity of 'Rehoboam' to 'Jeroboam' and 'Horemheb is discussed in my book). In Jeroboam, the Lord had pinned all his hopes for 'monotheism', the outlook all Jews were to single-mindedly encapsulate. Jeroboam began well enough, but he also fell into apostasy - much to the Lord's disgust.

This was the last straw. In Kings and Chronicles every 'wayward' king was compared to him, and Israel was the first to bear the full brunt of the Lord's anger. What form did the punishment take? Buttressed and cossetted by 'the Lord' (a 'god' the Assyrians, however, knew as 'Ashur'), Assyria was raised as the nation to chastise Israel. In time, Israel - later called 'Samaria' - became bitter enemies with Judah, resulting in much conflict between them. In fact, I surmise that the term 'Samaria' was a contemptuous reference to 'Sumeria', the region from which Assyria emerged. Indeed, Judah watched with glee as Israel had to pay humiliating tribute to Assyrian kings. By the time of Hosea II, the 20th /21st and last king of Israel, the first of Seven Chastisement of the Jews fell on the region. Per my Harmonized Timelines (available at my website http://pitoronet.com) in 660 BC, the 7th year of Hosea II, Shalmaneser V (663-658 BC), the Assyrian king of that time, suddenly cleared Israel of all Jews. What I must quickly note here is that, as regards the reigns of Assyrian kings, I have a 65-year difference with scholarly timelines and in my Harmonized Chronology I clinically show just where they have made mistakes.  As for the displaced Jews, no-one was absolutely sure where they went - but it was most likely Europe. There, they became the 'Lost Ten Tribes of Israel' who - it will soon become clear - did not however escape the great chastisements the Lord had prepared