Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [90]
BIBLICAL VOICES
When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; she painted her eyes, and adorned her head, and looked out of the window…. He looked up to the window and said…“Throw her down.” So they threw her down; some of her blood spattered on the wall and on the horses, which trampled on her. (2 Kings 9:30-33)
After Ahab’s death, Jezebel had remained the power behind the Israelite throne while her sons ruled. But in a coup led by Jehu, the general backed by Elisha, Ahab’s sons were overthrown and Jezebel was killed, fulfilling Elijah’s curse, and finally removing any vestiges of Baal worship from Israel. While Jehu emerges from the Bible with flying colors, in historical terms, he doesn’t fare as well. Jehu foolishly broke Israel’s alliances with neighboring Phoenicia and Judah, seriously weakening the nation at a time when the Assyrian empire, based in the Tigris River area and led by Shalmaneser III (859-824 BCE) was expanding its power. Shalmaneser reduced Israel to a vassal state, forced to pay heavy tribute. Assyria also went into a period of decline after the death of Shalmaneser, and Israel and Judah were able to recover some lost territory and a measure of independence. King Jehu was first in a dynasty that lasted for about a century in Israel. Among his heirs was Jeroboam II, little noted in the Bible but an effective ruler whose forty-year reign was a period of relative stability and wealth for Israel. After Jeroboam II’s death in 746 BCE, however, Israel once again fell into a period of chaotic instability.
BIBLICAL VOICES
Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria…. This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods and walked in the customs of other nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel introduced. (2 Kings 17:5-8)
Under Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BCE), the Assyrian identified as “Pul” in the Bible, an invigorated Assyrian empire rose again to dominate the Near East. The Assyrians extended their empire all the way to the Nile and their great capital city of Nineveh, with a magnificent temple honoring the city’s patron goddess Ishtar, rose on the banks of the northern Tigris River. Once again, Israel was reduced to a client state forced to pay huge tributes to the Assyrians. One of the Assyrians’ most effective methods of controlling conquered territories was to deport the elite of their defeated enemies back to Mesopotamia. When Israel’s last king, Hoshea, attempted to revolt against the Assyrian overlords with Egyptian assistance, Tiglath-pileser’s son, Shalmaneser V, invaded Israel and the capital of Samaria fell. In 721 BCE, Sargon II made Israel a province of Assyria and he deported 27,290 inhabitants of Israel to territory in the northern Tigris-Euphrates area. This was the end of the kingdom of Israel. The members of the ten tribes deported from Israel became the “Lost Tribes of Israel.”
Sargon II also introduced new settlers into the territory of former Israel, which was renamed Samaria, and its people became known as Samaritans. Curiously, Sargon sent an Israelite priest to instruct these people in the “law of the god of the land.” While the Samaritans adopted some Hebrew laws and customs, they continued many of their own practices, which then included human sacrifice. This historical event explains the enmity that existed between Jews and Samaritans,