Following Ish-bosheth's assassination at the hands of his own army captains, David officially acceded to the throne around 1010 BCE, replacing the House of Saul with his own and becoming the country's third king.

Solomon's death led to the rejection of the House of David by most of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, with only Judah and Benjamin remaining loyal: the dissenters chose Jeroboam as their monarch and formed the Kingdom of Israel in the north (Samaria); while the loyalists kept Solomon's son Rehoboam as their monarch and formed the Kingdom of Judah in the south (Judea).

In the aftermath of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem around 587 BCE, Solomon's Temple was destroyed and the Kingdom of Judah fell to the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Nearly 450 years later, the Hasmonean dynasty established the first independent Jewish kingdom since the Babylonian conquest, though it was not considered to be connected to the Davidic line nor to the Tribe of Judah.

[a] The earliest unambiguously[b] attested king from the Davidic line is Uzziah, who reigned in the 8th century BCE, about 75 years after Ahaziah, who is named on bullae seals belonging to his servants Abijah and Shubnayahu.

Hezekiah, Ahaz's son, is attested to by numerous royal seals[10][11] and Sennacherib's Annals;[12] Manasseh is recorded giving tribute to Esarhaddon;[13] Josiah has no relics explicitly naming him; however, seals belonging to his son Eliashib[14] and officials Nathan-melech[15][16] and Asaiah[17] have been discovered; and the kings Jehoahaz II, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah are never explicitly named in historical records but are instead alluded to; however, Jeconiah is mentioned by name in Babylonian documents detailing the rations he and his sons were given while held prisoner during the Babylonian captivity.

The Tel Dan Stele, as aforementioned, remains the only mention of David himself outside the Bible, and the historical reliability of the United Monarchy of Israel is archaeologically weak.

On the other hand, excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa[20] and Eglon,[21] as well as structures from Hazor, Gezer, Megiddo and other sites conventionally dated to the 10th century BCE, are interpreted by many scholars to show that Judah was capable of accommodating large-scale urban societies centuries before minimalist scholars claim,[22][23][24] and some have taken the physical archaeology of tenth-century Canaan as consistent with the former existence of a unified state on its territory,[25] as archaeological findings demonstrate substantial development and growth at several sites, plausibly related to the tenth century.

[26] Even so, as for David and his immediate descendants themselves, the position of some scholars, as described by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed, espouses that David and Solomon may well be based on "certain historical kernels", and probably did exist in their own right, but their historical counterparts simply could not have ruled over a wealthy lavish empire as described in the Bible, and were more likely chieftains of a comparatively modest Israelite society in Judah and not regents over a kingdom proper.

Later rabbinical authorities granted the office of exilarch to family members that traced its patrilineal[29] descent from David, King of Israel.

The Seder Olam Zutta attributes the office to Zerubbabel, a member of the Davidic line, who is mentioned as one of the leaders of the Jewish community in the 6th century BC, holding the title of Achaemenid Governor of Yehud Medinata.

The Levites had always been excluded from the Israelite monarchy, so when the Maccabees assumed the throne in order to rededicate the defiled Second Temple, a cardinal rule was broken.

According to scholars within Orthodox Judaism, this is considered to have contributed to their downfall and the eventual downfall of Judea; internal strife allowing for Roman occupation and the violent installation of Herod the Great as client king over the Roman province of Judea; and the subsequent destruction of the Second Temple by the future Emperor Titus.

During the Hasmonean period, the Davidic line was largely excluded from the royal house in Judea, but some members had risen to prominence as religious and communal leaders.

In the 11th–15th century, families that descended from the Exilarchs that lived in the South of France (Narbonne and Provence) and in northern Iberian peninsula (Barcelona, Aragon and Castile) received the title "Nasi" in the communities and were called "free men".

They had a special economic and social status in the Jewish community, and they were close to their respective governments, some serving as advisers and tax collectors/finance ministers.

Several families, as late as the 14th century, traced their descent back to Josiah, the brother of David ben Zakkai who had been banished to Chorasan (see the genealogies in [Lazarus 1890] pp.

[48] Orthodox views have generally held that the Messiah will be a patrilineal descendant of King David,[49] and will gather the Jews back into the Land of Israel, usher in an era of peace, build the Third Temple, father a male heir, re-institute the Sanhedrin, and so on.

[54] Another Christian interpretation emphasizes the minor, non-royal, line of David through Solomon's brother Nathan as it is recorded in the Gospel of Luke chapter 3 (entirely undocumented in the Hebrew Bible), which is often understood to be the family tree of Mary's father.

[55] Some Christian commentators also believe that this same "curse" is the reason why Zerubbabel, the rightful Solomonic king during the time of Nehemiah, was not given a kingship under the Persian empire.