2 Kings 17
Assyrians erase Israel from map
Hoshea, new king of Israel
1Hoshea, the son of Elah, became king of Israel. He ruled out of the capital city of Samaria. He began his reign when King Ahaz was into his 12th year of ruling Judah, in the south. 2Hoshea was not a good king, as far as God was concerned. But he wasn’t as bad as the kings before him.3Assyria’s King Shalmaneser [1] invaded Israel. Hoshea agreed to become one of Assyria’s servant kings, paying him taxes as tribute. 4But Assyria’s king found out that Hoshea had betrayed him. Hoshea withheld the tribute and asked Egypt’s King So to join him in breaking free of the Assyrian empire. For that, Assyria’s king had Hoshea arrested and imprisoned.
Israel erased, never to return
5Then the Assyrian king unleased a full-scale invasion of Israel. His army surrounded Israel’s capital city of Samaria in a siege that lasted three years. 6Then, in Hoshea’s ninth year as king, Assyrians broke through the defenses and captured Samaria. [2] They took survivors back to Assyria and resettled them into immigrant communities. [3] Assyrians scattered the Israelites into the towns of Halah, Habor, and Gozan [4] by the river. They sent some to the distant Mede [5] frontier.7Israel’s sin caused all of this. The LORD God brought their ancestors up here out of slavery in Pharoah’s Egypt. But they rewarded him by trading him in on idols. 8They adopted religions of the people God drove out of the land. And they let Israel’s kings lead them into new pagan worship practices. [6]
9People of Israel tried to hide their idolatry from God. They built secret shrines—little worship stations. They set them up everywhere, from guard towers outside their cities to panic rooms inside the king’s palace. 10On hilltops and under shade trees, they set up sacred pillars and poles for worshiping Asherah. [7] 11They burned incense at shrines everywhere, just like the people God drove off the land. They added to this more sins, which were absolutely evil. That made God angry. 12They worshiped idols, ignoring God’s order not to do it. [8]
13The LORD warned Israel and Judah. He sent prophets and seers who could see the future. They all warned the people to stop sinning. They said, “Stop your evil behavior. Respect the laws God gave your ancestors. Obey them all, as the prophets and God’s people tell you to do.” 14That went nowhere. Those people were as stubborn and as suspicious of God as their ancestors were. They didn’t trust God.
15They broke the contract with God that their ancestors had made—an agreement to obey his laws. Instead, they worshiped worthless idols, which turned them into a worthless nation. They adopted the customs of the people who used to live there even though God told them not to. 16They abandoned God’s laws and made a new religion. They molded a pair of golden calf idols and a pole for worshiping Asherah. They worshiped gods of the sky [9] and Baal [10] as well.
17They sacrificed their own sons and daughters, burning their bodies on altars. They practiced fortune-telling and sorcery. They chose evil as their lifestyle. That’s the opposite of what God wanted. So, God got mad. 18God’s anger ended Israel. He erased them. Only Judah was left of what used to be the united tribes of Israel.
19But Judah had problems, too. They didn’t obey God. Instead, they adopted the religion that Israel dreamed up for themselves. 20In the end, God rejected the people who had rejected him. He made life harder for them, and then he let raiders and invaders pick them to pieces until they, too, were gone.
21When God tore the northern tribes of Israel away from David’s dynasty, the northerners picked Jeroboam as king. He was the son of Nebat. King Jeroboam led Israel into the huge sin of idolatry. 22Israel continued the pagan worship tradition Jeroboam set up. 23It went on and on until God erased Israel from the land, as he warned he would do. His prophets and other servants had delivered that message. So, here’s what happened as a result. Assyrians deported the people of Israel out of their own country. They never came back.
Assyria gives Israel to settlers
24Assyria’s king repopulated Israel with people from other countries, whom he forced out of their homes. They came from the towns of Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. [11] The king ordered them to settle in the territory known as Samaria. They took the land and lived in the towns that Israel built.25These settlers on God’s land didn’t worship him when they first came. So God sent some lions to get their attention. The lions killed some of the people. [12] 26Someone reported this back to the king of Assyria. They said, “Those people you deported to towns in Samaria are getting eaten alive. They don’t know how to worship the god in that territory, so he’s sending lions to kill them.”
27The king said, “Go find one of the priests we brought here from Samaria. Take him back to teach the people how to stay on the good side of that god.” 28So, one of the priests moved back to the town of Bethel and taught the people how to worship the LORD. [13]
Settlers worship God and gods
29But one God wasn’t enough. Each community set up hilltop shrines. These were sacred spaces devoted to gods they grew up worshiping in the countries from which they came. 30The various groups worshiped these gods.Babylon: Succoth-Benoth [14]
Cuthah: Nergal [15]
Hamath: Ashima [16]
Sepharvaim: sacrificed children to Adrammelech [19] and Anammelech. [20]
32These people worshiped the LORD, too. But they picked whoever they wanted to serve as priests at the other worship shrines and sacred spaces they set up. 33Yes, they worshiped the LORD. But they brought their old religions with them and continued to practice them.
34To this very day, they still worship those pagan gods. They no longer worship the LORD or obey his laws, which he gave to the descendants of Jacob—the man God renamed “Israel.” [21] 35The LORD made a contract with the people of Israel. In this covenant he said, “You can’t worship idols or bow to them and offer sacrifices. [22] 36He brought you out of Egypt. Worship him. Sacrifice to him. 37Take his laws seriously and obey them. He wrote them for you. Don’t worship other gods. Period.
38Don’t ignore the contract with God. It’s a sacred covenant of devotion to each other. Don’t worship other gods. 39Instead, worship the LORD. He’s your God. He’s the one who saves you from your enemies.”
40Did the people listen? No. The kept practicing the religion of their homeland. 41They wanted their religion both ways. They observed the rituals for worshiping the LORD, while worshiping idols in their free time. To this day, their descendants are still trying to have it both ways.”
Footnotes
Shalmaneser V was king of Assyria from 726–722 BC. He was the successor to Tiglath-pileser. He led the Assyrian army into Israel to defeat Hoshea, which put an end to the coalition of tribes in the northland nation known as Israel.
This took place in 722 BC, most scholars agree.
This Assyrian king, like many others, adopted the policy of bringing conquered people home with him. Why invite the trouble? Perhaps they knew it was good to keep their friends close, but it was even better to keep their enemies closer, as the old saying goes. This kept the Israelites from reconstituting their nation, which had a long history of rebelling against outside overlords. In fact, they never returned as a people. They became known as the Lost Tribes of Israel. Another possible reason for bringing them home is to volunteer them for the army. King Shalmaneser’s brother and successor, Sargon, bragged that he caught enough Israelite men to form a battalion of 50 chariots. It took two men for each chariot: one driver and one riding shotgun, so to speak. Sargon’s notes about this are preserved on the Nimrud Prism.
Location of Halah and Habor are unknown. But the name Gozan has been linked to Tel Halaf since about King David’s time. It lies north of Israel, along the Turkey-Syria border, and beside the river that flows southward into the Euphrates River. The river meanders about 160 miles (260 km) to the Euphrates. But it’s just half that, as a single-minded carrier pigeon would fly.
The Medes were a people living in what is now northern and western Iran. They took their orders from the Assyrian king, as much of the ancient Middle East did in the 700s BC.
King Jeroboam made golden calves for Israel to worship. When Jeroboam ordered the two golden calves, there’s no indication that he thought of anything other than saving his skin. He was trying to keep his people from worshiping in Jerusalem. He thought if they went there regularly, they might eventually want to reunite the split nation under Jerusalem’s king of Judah.
Canaanite religion, featuring Baal the chief god, included ritual poles. These may have been trees or poles meant to represent trees, as symbols of the Canaanite fertility goddess Asherah, goddess of motherhood. She was the love interest of Baal. Canaan is now known as Israel and Palestinian Territories.
Exodus 20:4-5.
“You lift your idols in a procession, Sky gods Sikkuth and Kiyyun” (Amos 5:26).
Baal was a god of fertility in family, fields, and flocks. Canaanites, who were native to what is now Israel and Palestinian land, worshiped Baal. Joshua led the Jews in killing many Canaanites while the Jews reclaimed the land that the Bible says God promised to the descendants of Abraham. But Jews continued to worship Baal and other Middle Eastern gods off and on throughout Old Testament times.
Aside from Babylon, located about 50 miles (85 km) south of Baghdad, the other towns are a mystery. Some link Cuthah with a ruin called Tel Ibrahim, about 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) northeast of Babylon.
The idea of God sending lions to kill people so they would worship him doesn’t sound very godly to some readers today. Some read passages like this as coming from a writer who believed God controlled everything. That did seem to be a common belief among the Israelite ancestors of today’s Jewish people. So whatever happened, good or bad, God got the credit or the blame—whether he deserved it. Others insist if the Bible says God sent lions, then God did.
He apparently forgot a lot along the way—like all the Jewish Bible except the first five books, attributed to Moses. That’s the Bible of the religious group that developed there, the Samaritans—the Samaritan Pentateuch. The settlers took the name of the land, Samaria, a territory north of Jerusalem. Samaritans revered the city of Shechem, at the head of the valley between their sacred mountains of Gerizim and Ebal.
Succoth-benoth means “tents for daughters.” It’s a two-part name of a Babylonian god and his love interest.
Nergal is a god of the dead in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of Iraq.
Ashima shows up in the Elephantine papyri as Ashim-bethel, apparently the love interest of, yes, the LORD. Bethel was where the Samaritan priest was supposed to teach settlers how to worship God.
Nibhaz is a mystery, an unknown god.
Tartak is associated with Attargatis, a powerful goddess.
Adrammelech is a god from between the rivers. The name means “carry king.”
Anammelech is associated with the sun-god Anu and was worshiped between the two great rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates and in Syria.
Genesis 32:28.
Exodus 20:5.
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