The Fall of Samaria

Hoshea of Israel took the throne of Israel by killing Pekah, in the years when Tiglath-pileser of Assyria annexed Galilee and Gilead and deported their people (2 Kings 15:29–30). When Shalmaneser V marched against him, Hoshea became his vassal and paid tribute. Later he sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and stopped the payments. The king of Assyria put him in prison, overran the land and besieged Samaria for three years (2 Kings 17:1–5).

In Hoshea’s ninth year the city was taken. The Israelites were deported to Halah, to the Habor, the river of Gozan, and to the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:6) (2 Kings 18:9–11). The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim to live in the towns of Samaria. They learned to fear the Lord, Kings says, and went on serving their own gods as well (2 Kings 17:24–33).

Mesopotamian records tell the same story from the other side. The Babylonian chronicle says of Shalmaneser only that he “ravaged Samaria” (Babylonian Chronicle 1 i.27–28), and that he died in the tenth month of his fifth year, when Sargon took the throne (Babylonian Chronicle 1 i.29–31). Sargon II claims the conquest for himself. In the inscription of his palace he says that he besieged and took Samaria, carried off 27,290 of its inhabitants, added fifty chariots to his army and imposed tribute on the rest (Sargon II, Display Inscription lines 23–25). A prism from Nimrud adds that he resettled the city with people from other lands he had conquered and set a governor over it (Sargon II, Nimrud Prism iv 25–41).

All three accounts agree that Samaria fell to Assyria. Kings and Sargon’s inscriptions agree that its people were deported and that others were settled there; the chronicle mentions neither. The accounts differ on the conqueror. Kings names Shalmaneser as the king who came up and besieged the city, and says of its capture only that “the king of Assyria” took it (2 Kings 17:3–6) (2 Kings 18:9–10). The Babylonian chronicle credits Shalmaneser, and Sargon’s scribes credit Sargon. Kings gives no number for the deported.

Kings reads the fall as the result of Israel’s breach of the covenant, as the prophets had warned, and notes that Judah alone was left (2 Kings 17:7–18). It traces the later people of Samaria to the settlers (2 Kings 17:29–41). The distance between Jews and Samaritans is still taken for granted in the Gospels (John 4:9).