Although Israel was dominant for most of the time the kingdoms of Israel and Judah coexisted, it has remained in Judah s shadow in both the Hebrew Bible and consequently in the attention of modern scholarship. This book presents the first comprehensive history of the northern kingdom and description of the archaeology of northern Israel from the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1350 B.C.E.) until the kingdom's fall in 720 B.C.E. and beyond. It tells the story of the northern kingdom primarily in its formative phases. The narrative is based in archaeology and makes use of the most updated field research, with the addition of what is known from ancient Near Eastern and biblical texts. Finkelstein's thirty years of fieldwork in sites related to the northern kingdom have paved the way for a new understanding of the history and archaeology of ancient Israel

尽管在以色列和犹大王国共存的大部分时间里，以色列都处于主导地位，但在希伯来圣经中，以色列一直处于犹大的阴影之下，因此也受到了现代学术界的关注。本书首次全面介绍了北国的历史，并描述了从青铜时代晚期（约公元前1350年）到公元前720年王国灭亡及以后的以色列北部考古情况。它主要讲述了北国在其形成阶段的故事。该书的叙述以考古学为基础，利用最新的实地研究，并加入了从古代近东和圣经文本中了解到的内容。芬克尔斯坦在与北方王国有关的遗址中进行了30年的实地考察，为人们对古代以色列的历史和考古学有了新的认识铺平了道路。