Jerusalem becomes the capital of the Kingdom of Judah while the Kingdom of Israel locates its capital at Shechem in Samaria when the Kingdom of Judah splits from the larger Kingdom of Israel (which the Bible places near the end of the reign of Solomon in about 930 BCE, although Israel Finkelstein and others dispute the very existence of a unified monarchy to begin with.

Thomas L. Thompson argues that it only became a city and capable of acting as a state capital in the middle of the seventh century.