Amos and Jeremiah argued that religious backsliding and socio-economic inequality were the fundamental causes of the political and military insecurity that haunted both Jewish states. Yet geopolitics is a not a matter of bread alone. It was certainly the case that the two small kingdoms, like modern Israel, often found themselves surrounded by potentially hostile enemies, with only intermittent periods during which they were at peace with one or another of their neighbors.
Dov S. Zakheim, “The Geopolitics of Scripture,” The American Interest (July/August 2012), 10.