In our study of what happened in the northern kingdom, we saw that Israel was frequently involved in wars with neighbouring states during the ninth century and it was not until the reign of Jeroboam II in the first half of the eighth century that the country was at peace for a period before the Assyrian threat arose. The smaller southern kingdom of Judah was less involved in hostilities with its neighbours than the northern kingdom and was also spared the coups d'etat which overthrew various rulers of Israel. There was an unbroken line of kings in Judah who were descended from David. Jerusalem remained the important royal city and centre of worship. The writer of the book of Kings expresses some approval of the kings of Judah during this period but also says that pagan places of worship continued to be visited by the people because the kings did not destroy these places. In the last years of the ninth century, King Joash of Judah carried out extensive renovations and repairs to the Temple which had been built by Solomon in the tenth century, and which continued to be the central place of Judah's worship of Yahweh.

In the ninth century the prophets Elijah and Elisha challenged the people of the northern kingdom, and in the middle of the eighth century, Amos, followed by Hosea, spoke to Israel, but in Judah during this period we hear of no prophet until Isaiah received his call to be God's spokesman to Judah in 742 B.C. By that year, Amos had finished his prophetic ministry to Israel and had returned to Judah, where apparently he had no call to speak to his own people. Hosea had begun his prophetic ministry several years earlier. Tiglath Pileser ill had become king of Assyria in 745 B.C. and was embarking on his plans for the conquest of the Middle East in which Israel would be destroyed as a state and Judah would come under Assyrian domination. Throughout the prophetic ministry of Isaiah, Assyria dominated the political scene of the Middle East.