_HOSHEA, AND THE FALL OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM_
B.C. 734-725
2 KINGS xvii. 1-41
"As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the
water."--HOS. x. 7.
As a matter of convenience, we follow our English Bible in calling the
prophet by the name Ho_sea_, and the nineteenth, last, and best king
of Israel Ho_shea_. The names, however, are identical (הֹושֵׁצַ), and
mean "Salvation"--the name borne by Joshua also in his earlier days.
In the irony of history the name of the last king of Ephraim was thus
identical with that of her earliest and greatest hero, just as the
last of Roman emperors bore the double name of the Founder of Rome and
the Founder of the Empire--Romulus Augustulus. By a yet deeper irony
of events the king in whose reign came the final precipitation of ruin
wore the name which signified deliverance from it.
And more and more, as time went on, the prophet Hosea felt that he had
no word of present hope or comfort for the king his namesake. It was
the more brilliant lot of Isaiah, in the Southern Kingdom, to kindle
the ardour of a generous courage. Like Tyrtæus, who roused the
Spartans to feel their own greatness--like Demosthenes, who hurled
the might of Athens against Philip of Macedon--like Chatham, "bidding
England be of good cheer, and hurl defiance at her foes"--like Pitt,
pouring forth, in the days of the Napoleonic terror, "the indomitable
language of courage and of hope,"--Isaiah was missioned to encourage
Judah to despise first the mighty Syrian, and then the mightier
Assyrian. Far different was the lot of Hosea, who could only be the
denouncer of an inevitable doom. His sad function was like that of
Phocion after Chæroneia, of Hannibal after Zama, of Thiers after
Sedan: he had to utter the Cassandra-voices of prophecy, which his
besotted and demented contemporaries--among whom the priests were the
worst of all[389]--despised and flouted until the time for repentance
had gone by for ever.
True it is that Hosea could not be content--what true heart could?--to
breathe nothing but the language of reprobation and despair. Israel
had been "yoked to his two transgressions,"[390] but Jehovah could not
give up His love for His chosen people:--
"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?
How shall I surrender thee, Israel?
How shall I make thee as Admah?
How shall I treat thee as Zeboim?
Mine heart is turned within Me;
I am wholly filled with compassion!
I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim:
For I am God, and not man.
The Holy One in the midst of thee!
I will not come to exterminate!
They shall come after Jehovah as after a lion that roars!
For he shall roar, and his sons shall come hurrying from the
west,
They shall come hurrying as a bird out of Egypt,
And as a dove out of the land of Assyria;
And I will cause them to dwell in their houses, Saith
Jehovah."[391]
Alas! the gleam of alleviation was imaginary rather than actual. The
prophet's wish was father to his thought. He had prophesied that
Israel should be scattered in all lands (ix. 3, 12, 17, xiii. 3-16).
This was true; and it did not prove true, except in some higher ideal
sense, that "Israel shall again dwell in his own land" (xiv. 4-7) in
prosperity and joy.
The date of Hoshea's accession is uncertain, and we cannot tell in
what sense we are to understand his reign as having lasted "nine
years."[392] We have no grounds for accepting the statement of
Josephus (_Antt._, IX. xiii. 1), that Hoshea had been a friend of
Pekah and plotted against him. Tiglath-Pileser expressly says that he
himself slew Pekah and appointed Hoshea.[393] His must have been, at
the best, a pitiful and humiliating reign. He owed his purely vassal
sovereignty to Assyrian patronage. He probably did as well for Israel
as was in his power. Singular to relate, he is the only one of all the
kings of Israel of whom the historian has a word of commendation; for
while we are told that "he did that which was evil in the sight of
the Lord," it is added that it was "not as the kings of Israel that
were before him." But we do not know wherein either his evil-doing or
his superiority consisted. The Rabbis guess that he did not replace
the golden calf at Dan which Tiglath-Pileser had taken away (Hos. x.
6); or that he did not prevent his subjects from going to Hezekiah's
passover.[394] "It seems like a harsh jest," says Ewald, "that this
Hoshea, who was better than all his predecessors, was to be the last
king." But so it has often been in history. The vengeance of the
French Revolution smote the innocent and harmless Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette--not Louis XIV., or Louis XV. and Madame du Pompadour.
His patron Tiglath-Pileser ended his magnificent reign of conquest in
727, soon after he had seated Hoshea on the throne. The removal of his
strong grasp on the helm caused immediate revolt. Phœnicia especially
asserted her independence against Shalmaneser IV. He seems to have
spent five years in an unavailing attempt to capture Island-Tyre.
Meanwhile, the internal troubles which had harassed and weakened Egypt
ceased, and a strong Ethiopian king named Sabaco established his rule
over the whole country.[395] It was perhaps the hope that Phœnicia
might hold out against the Assyrian, and that the Egyptian might
protect Samaria, which kindled in the mind of Hoshea the delusive plan
of freeing himself and his impoverished land from the grinding tribute
imposed by Nineveh. While Shalmaneser[396] was trying to quell Tyre,
Hoshea, having received promises of assistance from Sabaco, withheld
the "presents"--the _minchah_, as the tribute is euphemistically
called--which he had hitherto paid. Seeing the danger of a powerful
coalition, Shalmaneser swept down on Samaria in 724. Possibly he
defeated the army of Israel in the plain of Jezreel (Hos. i. 5), and
got hold of the person of Hoshea. Josephus says that he "besieged
him"; but the sacred historian only tells us that "he shut him up, and
bound him in prison." Whether Hoshea was taken in battle, or betrayed
by the Assyrian party in Samaria, or whether he went in person to see
if he could pacify the ruthless conqueror, he henceforth disappears
from history "like foam"--or like a chip or a bubble--"upon the
water." We do not know whether he was put to death, but we infer from
an allusion in Micah that he was subjected to the cruel indignities in
which the Assyrians delighted; for the prophet says, "They shall smite
the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek."[397] Perhaps in the
title "Judge" (Shophet, _suffes_) we may see a sign that Hoshea's
royalty was little more than the shadow of a name.
Having thus got rid of the king, Shalmaneser proceeded to invest the
capital. But Samaria was strongly fortified upon its hill, and the
Jewish race has again and again shown--as it showed so conspicuously
in the final crisis of its destiny, when Jerusalem defied the terrible
armies of Rome--that with walls to protect them they could pluck up a
terrible courage and endurance from despair. Strong as Assyria was,
the capital of Ephraim for three years resisted her beleaguering host
and her crashing battering-rams. About all the anguish which prevailed
within the city, and the wild vicissitudes of orgy and starvation,
history is silent. But prophecy tells us that the sorrows of a
travailing woman came upon the now kingless city. They drank to the
dregs the cup of fury.[398] The saddest Northern prophet, "the
Jeremiah of Israel," sings the dirge of Israel's saddest king.[399]
"I am become to them as a lion;
As a leopard will I watch by the way;
I will meet them as a bear bereaved of her whelps,
And rend the caul of their heart,
And there will I devour them like a lioness:
The beast of the field shall tear them....
Where now is thy king, that he may save thee in all thy cities
And thy judges, of whom thou saidst, 'Give me a king and
prince'?
I give thee a king in Mine anger,
And take him away in My wrath."
For three years Samaria held out. During the siege Shalmaneser died,
and was succeeded by Sargon, who--though he vaguely talks of "the
kings his ancestors," and says that he had been preceded by three
hundred and thirty Assyrian dynasts--never names his father, and seems
to have been a usurping general.[400]
Sabaco remained inactive, and basely deserted the miserable people
which had relied on his protection. In this conduct Egypt was true to
its historic character of untrustworthiness and inertness. Both in
Israel and in Judah there were two political parties. One relied on
the strength of Egypt; the other counselled submission to Assyria,
or--in the hour when it became necessary to defy Assyria--confidence
in God. Egypt was as frail a support as one of her own paper-reeds,
which bent under the weight, and broke and ran into the hand of every
one who leaned on it.
Sargon did not raze the city, and we see from the _Eponym Canon_ that
its inhabitants were still strong enough some years later to take part
in a futile revolt. But we have one dreadful glimpse of the horrors
which he inflicted upon it. They were the inevitable punishment of
every conquered city which had dared to resist the Assyrian arm.
"Samaria shall bear her guilt,
For she hath rebelled against her God.
They shall fall by the sword:
Their infants shall be dashed in pieces,
And their women in child shall be ripped up."[401]
Sargon's own record of the matter on the tablets at Khorsabad is: "I
besieged, took, and occupied the city of Samaria, and carried into
captivity twenty-seven thousand two hundred and eighty of its
inhabitants. I changed the former government of this country, and
placed over it lieutenants of my own. And Sebeh, Sultan of Egypt, came
to Raphia to fight against me. They met me, and I routed them. Sebeh
fled."[402] The Assyrians were occupied in the unsuccessful siege of
Tyre between 720-715, during which years Sargon put down Yahubid of
Hamath, whose revolt had been aided by Damascus and Samaria. In 710 he
marched against Ashdod (Isa. xx. 1). In 709 he defeated
Merodach-Baladan at Dur-Yakin, and reconquered Chaldæa, deporting some
of the population into Samaria. In 704, in the fifteenth year of his
reign, he was assassinated, after a career of victory. He inscribes on
his palace at Khorsabad a prayer to his god Assur, that, after his
toils and conquests, "I may be preserved for the long years of a long
life, for the happiness of my body, for the satisfaction of my heart.
May I accumulate in this palace immense treasures, the booties of all
countries, the products of mountains and valleys." Assur and the gods
of Chaldæa were invoked in vain; the prayer was scattered to the
winds, and the murderer's dagger was the comment on Sargon's happy
anticipations of peace and splendour.
Israel fell unpitied by her southern neighbour, for Judah was still
smarting under memories of the old contempt and injury of Joash
ben-Jehoahaz, and the more recent wrongs inflicted by Pekah and Rezin.
Isaiah exults over the fate of Samaria, while he points the moral of her
fall to the drunken priests and prophets of Jerusalem. "Woe," he says,
"to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading
flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of
them that are smitten down with wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and
strong one [_i.e._, the Assyrian]; as a tempest of hail, a destroying
storm, as a tempest of mighty water overflowing, shall he cast down to
the earth with violence. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim,
shall be trodden underfoot: and the fading flower of his glorious
beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first
ripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth,
while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up."[403] Israel had begun in
hostility to Judah, and perished by it at last.
Such, then, was the end of the once brilliant kingdom of Israel--the
kingdom which, even so late as the reign of Jeroboam II., seemed to
have a great future before it. No one could have foreseen beforehand
that, when, with the prophetic encouragement of Ahijah, Jeroboam I.
established his sovereignty over the greater, richer, and more
flourishing part of the land assigned to the sons of Jacob, the new
kingdom should fall into utter ruin and destruction after only two and
a half centuries of existence, and its tribes melt away amid the
surrounding nations, and sink into a mixed and semi-heathen race
without any further nationality or distinctive history. It seemed far
less probable that the mere fragment of the Southern Kingdom, after
retaining its separate existence for more than one hundred and sixty
years longer than its more powerful brother, should continue to endure
as a nation till the end of time. Such was the design of God's
providence, and we know no more. The Northern Kingdom had, up to this
time, produced the greatest and most numerous prophets--Ahijah,
Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Nahum, and many
more.[404] It had also produced the loveliest and most enduring poetry
in the Song of Songs, the Song of Deborah, and other contributions to
the Books of Jashar, and of the Wars of Jehovah. It had also brought
into vigour the earliest and best historic literature, the narratives
of the Elohist and the Jehovist. These immortal legacies of the
religious spirit of the Northern Kingdom were incomparably superior in
moral and enduring value to the Levitic jejuneness of the Priestly
Code, with its hierarchic interests and ineffectual rules, which, in
the exaggerated supremacy attached to rites, proved to be the final
blight of an unspiritual Judaism. Israel had also been superior in
prowess and in deeds of war, and in the days of Joash ben-Jehoahaz
ben-Jehu had barely conceded to Judah a right to separate existence.
More than all this, the apostasies of Judah, from the days of Solomon
downwards, were quite as heinous as Jezebel's Baal-worship, and far
more deadly than the irregular but not at first idolatrous cultus of
Bethel. The prophets are careful to teach Judah that if she was
spared it was not because of any good deservings.[405] Yet now the
cedar was scathed and smitten down, and its boughs were rent and
scattered; and the thistle had escaped the wild beast's tread!
In the former volume we glanced at some of the causes of this, and the
blessings which resulted from it. The central and chiefest blessing
was, first, the preservation of a purer form of monotheism, and a
loftier ideal of religion--though only realised by a few in
Judah--than had ever prevailed in the Northern Tribes; secondly, and
above all, the development of that inspiring Messianic prophecy which
was to be fulfilled seven centuries later, when He who was David's Son
and David's Lord came to our lost race from the bosom of the Father,
and brought life and immortality to light.
And it was the work purely of "God's unseen providence, by men nicknamed
'Chance,'" which, dealing with nations as the potter with his clay,
chooses some to honour and some to dishonour. For, as all the prophets
are anxious to remind the Judæan Kingdom, their success, the
procrastination of their downfall, their restoration from captivity,
were not due to any merits of their own. The Jews were and ever had been
a stiff-necked nation; and though some of their kings had been faithful
servants of Jehovah, yet many of them--like Rehoboam, and Ahaz, and
Manasseh--exceeded in wickedness and inexcusable apostasy the least
faithful of the worshippers at Gilgal and Bethel. They were plainly
reminded of their nothingness: "And thou shalt speak and say before the
Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down
into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a
nation."[406] "Fear not, thou worm Jacob: I will help thee."[407]
But this was the end of the Ten Tribes. Nor must we say that Hosea's
prediction of mercy was laughed to scorn by the irony of events, when
he had given it as God's promise that--
"I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger,
I will not again destroy Israel;
For I am God, and not man."[408]
The words mean that mercy is God's chiefest and most essential
attribute; and, after all, a nation is composed of families and
individuals, and in political extinction there may have been many
families and individuals in Israel, like that of Tobias, and like that
of Anna, the prophetess of the tribe of Asher, who found, either in
their far exile, or among the scattered Jews who still peopled the old
territories, a peace which was impossible during the distracted
anarchy and deepening corruption of the whole period which had elapsed
since the founding of the house of Omri. In any case God knows and
loves His own. The words,
"I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger;
For I am God, and not man,"
might stand for an epitome of much that is most precious in Holy Writ.
God's orthodoxy is the truth; and the truth remaineth, though man's
orthodoxy exercises all its fury and all its baseness to overwhelm it.
What hope has any man, even a St. Paul--what hope had even the Lord
Himself--before the harsh, self-interested tribunals of human
judgment, or of that purely external religionism which has always
shown itself more brutal and more blundering than secular cruelty?
What chance has there been, humanly speaking, for God's best saints,
prophets, and reformers, when priests, popes, or inquisitors have been
their judges? If God resembled those generations of unresisted
ecclesiastics, whose chief resort has been the syllogism of violence,
and whose main arguments have been the torture-chamber and the stake,
what hope could there possibly be for the vast majority of mankind but
those endless torments by the terrors of which corrupt Churches have
forced their tyranny upon the crushed liberties and the paralysed
conscience of mankind? The Indian sage was right who said that "God
can only be truly described by the words No! No!"--that is, by
repudiating multitudes of the ignoble and cruel basenesses which
religious teachers have imagined or invented respecting Him. Because
God is God, and not man--God, not a tyrant or an inquisitor--God, with
the great compassionate heart of unfathomable tenderness,--therefore,
in all who truly love Him, perfect love casteth out fear, because fear
hath torment. Sin means ruin; yet God is love.[409]
* * * * *
The historian of the Kings here digresses, in a manner unusual to the
Old Testament, to give us a most interesting glimpse of the fate of
the conquered people, and the origin of the race which was known to
after-ages by the name "Samaritan."
Sargon, when he had sacked the capital, carried out the policy of
deportation which had now been established by the Assyrian kings. He
achieved the double purpose of populating the capital and province of
Nineveh, while he reduced subject nations to inanition, by sweeping
away all the chief of the inhabitants from conquered states, and
settling them in his own more immediate dominions. There they would be
reduced to impotence, and mingle with the races among whom their lot
would henceforth be cast. He therefore "carried Israel away" into
Assyria, and placed them in Halah, north of Thapsacus, on the
Euphrates, and in Habor, the river of Gozan[410]--_i.e._, on the river
in Northern Assyria which still bears the name of Khabour, and flows
into the Euphrates--and in the cities of the Medes.[411] He replaced
the old population by Dinaites, Tarplites, Apharsathchites,
Susanchites, Elamites, Dehavites, and Babylonians, after carrying away
the great bulk of the better-class population.[412]
After this the historian pauses to sum up and emphasise once more the
main lesson of his narrative. It is that "righteousness exalteth a
nation, and sin is the reproach of any people." God had called His son
Israel out of Egypt, delivered His chosen from Pharaoh, given them a
pleasant land; but "Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, and
had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen."
They had failed therefore in fulfilling the very purpose for which
they had been set apart. They had been intended "to uplift among the
nations the banner of righteousness" and the banner of the One True
God. Instead of this, they were seduced by the heathen ritual of
"Gay religions full of pomp and gold."
They decked out alien institutions,[413] and alike in frequented and
populous places--"from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced
city"--set up _matstseboth_ (A.V., "pillars") and _Asherim_ on every
high hill. The green trees became _obumbratrices scelerum_, the secret
bowers of their iniquities. They burnt incense on the _bamoth_, and
served idols, and wrought wickedness. Useless had been the voices of
all the prophets and the seers. They went after vain things, and
became vain. Beginning with the two "calves," they proceeded to lewd
and orgiastic idolatries. Ahab and Jezebel seduced them into Tyrian
Baal-worship. From the Assyrians they learnt and practised the
adoration of the host of heaven.[414] From Moab and Ammon they
borrowed the abominable rites of Moloch, and used divination and
enchantments by means of belomancy (Ezek. xxi. 21, 22) and necromancy,
and sold themselves to do wickedness.
Nor was this all. These idolatries, with their guilty ritualism, were
not confined to Israel, but also
"Infected Zion's daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah."
And thus, when Jehovah afflicted the seed of Israel and cast them out
of His sight, Judah also had to feel the stroke of retribution.[415]
And it is idle to object that even if Israel had been faithful she must
have inevitably perished before the superior might of Damascus, or
Nineveh, or Babylon. How can we tell? It is not possible for us thus to
write unwritten history, and there is absolutely nothing to show that
the surmise is correct. In the days of David, of Uzziah, of Jeroboam
II., Judah and Israel had shown what they could achieve. Had they been
strong in faithfulness to Jehovah, and in the righteousness which that
faith required, they would have shown an invincible strength amid the
moral enervation of the surrounding people. They might have held their
own by welding into one strong kingdom the whole of Palestine, including
Philistia, Phœnicia, the Negeb, and the Trans-Jordanic region. They
might have consolidated the sway which they at various times attained
southwards, as far as the Red Sea port of Elath; northwards over Aram
and Damascus, as far as the Hamath on the Orontes; eastwards to
Thapsacus on the Euphrates; westward to the Isles of the Gentiles.
There is nothing improbable, still less impossible, in the view that, if
the Israelites had truly served Jehovah and obeyed His laws, they might
then have permanently established the monarchy which was ideally
regarded as their inheritance, and which for brief and fitful periods
they partially maintained. And such a monarchy, held together by warrior
statesmen, strong and righteous, and above all secure in the blessing of
God, would have been a thoroughly adequate counterpoise, not only to
dilatory and distracted Egypt, which had long ceased to be aggressive,
but even to brutal Assyria, which prevailed in no small measure because
of the isolation and mutual dissension of these southern principalities.
But, as it was, "Assyria and Egypt--the two world-powers in the dawn
of history, the two chief sources of ancient civilisation, the twin
giant-empires which bounded the Israelite people on the right hand and
on the left--were cruel neighbours, between whom the ill-fated nation
was tossed to and fro in wanton sport like a shuttlecock. They were
cruel friends before whom it must cringe in turns, praying sometimes
for help, suing sometimes for very life--alternate scourges in the
hand of the Divine wrath. Now it is the fly of Egypt, and now it is
the bee of Assyria, whose ruthless swarms issue forth at the word of
Jehovah, settling in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and
upon all bushes, with deadly sting, fatal to man and beast,
devastating the land far and wide. Holding the poor Israelite in their
relentless embrace, they threatened ever and again to crush him by
their grip. Like the fabled rocks which frowned over the narrow
straits of the Bosporus, they would crash together and annihilate the
helpless craft which the storms of destiny had placed at their mercy.
Israel reeled under their successive blows. As was the beginning, so
was the end. As the captivity of Egypt had been the cradle of the
nation, so was the captivity of Assyria to be its tomb."[416]
In any case the principle of the historian remains unshaken. Sin is
weakness; idolatry is folly and rebellion; uncleanness is decrepitude.
St. Paul was not thinking of this ancient Philosophy of History when
he wrote his Epistle to the Romans; yet the intense and masterly
sketch which he gives of that moral corruption which brought about the
long, slow, agonising dissolution of the beauty that was Greece, and
the grandeur that was Rome, is one of its strongest justifications.
His view only differs from the summary before us in the power of its
eloquence and the profoundness of its psychologic insight. He says the
same thing as the historian of the Kings, only in words of greater
power and wider reach, when he writes: "For the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness. Knowing God, they
glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in
their reasonings" (ἐματαιώθησαν, the very word used in the LXX. in 2
Kings xvii. 15), "and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools" (words which might describe
the expediency-policy of Jeroboam I., and its fatal consequences),
"and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an
image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and
creeping things. For this cause God gave them up to passions of
dishonour, and unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are
not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,
malignity,"--and so on, through a long catalogue of iniquities which
are identical with those which we find so burningly denounced on the
pages of the prophets of Israel and Judah.
Even a Machiavelli, cool and cynical and audacious as was his
scepticism, could see and admit that faithfulness to religion is the
secret of the happiness and prosperity of states.[417] An irreligious
society tends inevitably and always to be a dissolute society; and a
"dissolute society is the most tragic spectacle which history has ever
to present--a nest of disease, of jealousy, of dissensions, of ruin,
and despair, whose last hope is to be washed off the world and
disappear. Such societies must die sooner or later of their own
gangrene, of their own corruption, because the infection of evil,
spreading into unbounded selfishness, ever intensifying and
reproducing passions which defeat their own aim, can never end in
anything but moral dissolution." We need not look further than the
collapse of France after the battle of Sedan, and the cause to which
that collapse was attributed, not only by Christians, but by her own
most worldly and sceptical writers, to see that the same causes ever
issue and will issue in the same ruinous effects.
* * * * *
In order to complete the history of the Northern Kingdom, the
historian here anticipates the order of time by telling us what
happened to the mongrel population whom Sargon transplanted into
central Ephraim in place of the old inhabitants.
The king, we are told, brought them from Babylon--which was at this
time under the rule of Assyria; from Cuthah--by which seems to be
meant some part of Mesopotamia near Babylon;[418] from Avva, or
Ivah--probably the same as Ahavah or Hit, on the Euphrates, north-west
of Babylon; from Sepharvaim, or Sippara, also on the Euphrates;[419]
and from Hamath, on the Orontes, which had not long remained under
Jeroboam II.[420] It must not be supposed that the whole population of
Ephraim was deported; that was a physical impossibility. Although we
are told in Assyrian annals that Sargon carried away with him so vast
a number of captives, it is, of course, clear that the lowest and
poorest part of the population was left.[421] We can imagine the wild
confusion which arose when they found themselves compelled to share
the dismantled palaces and abandoned estates of the wealthy with the
horde of new colonists, whose language, in all probability, they but
imperfectly understood. There must have been many a tumult, many a
scene of horror, such as took place in the long antagonism of Normans
and Saxons in England, before the immigrants and the relics of the
former populace settled down to amalgamation and mutual tolerance.
Sargon is said to have carried away with him the golden calf or calves
of Bethel, as Tiglath-Pileser is said by the Rabbis to have carried away
that of Dan.[422] He also took away with him all the educated classes,
and all the teachers of religion.[423] No one was left to instruct the
ignorant inhabitants; and, as Hosea had prophesied, there was neither a
sacrifice, nor a pillar, nor an ephod, and not even teraphim to which
they could resort.[424] Naturally enough, the disunited dregs of an old
and of a new population had no clear knowledge of religion. They "feared
not Jehovah." The sparseness of inhabitants, with its consequent neglect
of agriculture, caused the increase of wild beasts among them. There had
always been lions and bears in "the swellings of Jordan,"[425] and in
all the lonelier parts of the land; and to this day there are leopards
in the woods of Carmel, and hyænas and jackals in many regions.
Conscious of their miserable and godless condition, and afflicted by the
lions, which they regarded as a sign of Jehovah's anger, the Ephraimites
sent a message to the King of Assyria. They only claimed Jehovah as
their local god, and complained that the new colonists had provoked the
wrath of "the God of the land" by not knowing His "manner"--that is,
the way in which He should be worshipped. The consequence was that they
were in danger of being exterminated by lions. The kings of Assyria were
devoted worshippers of Assur and Merodach, but they held the common
belief of ancient polytheists that each country had its own potent
divinities. Sargon, therefore, gave orders that one of the priests of
his captivity should be sent back to Samaria, "to teach them the manner
of the god of the land." The priest selected for the purpose returned,
took up his residence at the old shrine of Bethel, and "taught them how
they should fear Jehovah." His success was, however, extremely limited,
except among the former followers of Jeroboam's dishonoured cult. The
old religious shrines still continued, and the immigrants used them for
the glorification of their former deities. Samaria, therefore, witnessed
the establishment of a singularly hybrid form of religionism. The
Babylonians worshipped Succoth-Benoth,[426] perhaps Zirbanit, wife of
Merodach or Bel; the Cuthites worshipped Nergal, the Assyrian war-god,
the lion-god;[427] the Hittites, from Hamath, worshipped Ashima or
Esmûn, the god of air and thunder, under the form of a goat;[428] the
Avites preferred Nibhaz and Tartak, perhaps Saturn--unless these names
be Jewish jeers, implying that one of these deities had the head of a
dog, and the other of an ass.[429] More dreadful, if less ridiculous,
was the worship of the Sepharvites, who adored Adrammelech and
Anammelech, the sun-god under male and female forms, to whom, as to
Moloch, they burnt their children in the fire. As for ministers, "they
made unto them priests from among themselves,[430] who offered
sacrifices for them in the shrines of the bamoth." Thus the whole
mongrel population "feared the Lord, and served their own gods," as they
continued to do in the days of the annalist whose record the historian
quotes. He ends his interesting sketch with the words, that, in spite of
the Divine teaching, "these nations"--so he calls them, and so
completely does he refuse to them the dignity of being Israel's
children--feared the Lord, and served their graven images, their
children likewise, and their children's children,--"as did their
fathers, so do they unto this day."[431]
The "unto this day" refers, no doubt, to the document from which the
historian of the Kings was quoting--perhaps about B.C. 560, in the third
generation after the fall of Samaria. A very brief glance will suffice
to indicate the future history of the Samaritans. We hear but little of
them between the present reference and the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. By
that time they had purged themselves of these grosser idolatries, and
held themselves fit in all respects to co-operate with the returned
exiles in the work of building the Temple. Such was not the opinion of
the Jews. Ezra regarded them as "the adversaries of Judah and
Israel."[432] The exiles rejected their overtures. In B.C. 409 Manasseh,
a grandson of the high priest expelled by Nehemiah for an unlawful
marriage with a daughter of Sanballat, of the Samaritan city of
Beth-horon, built the schismatic temple on Mount Gerizim.[433] The
relations of the Samaritans to the Jews became thenceforth deadly. In
B.C. 175 they seconded the profane attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to
paganise the Jews, and in B.C. 130 John Hyrcanus, the Maccabee,
destroyed their temple. They were accused of waylaying Jews on their way
to the Feasts, and of polluting the Temple with dead bones.[434] They
claimed Jewish descent (John iv. 12), but our Lord called them "aliens"
(ἀλλογενής, Luke xvii. 18), and Josephus describes them as "residents
from other nations" (μέτοικοι, ἀλλοεθνεῖς). They are now a rapidly
dwindling community of fewer than a hundred souls--"the oldest and
smallest sect in the world"--equally despised by Jews and Mohammedans.
The Jews, as in the days of Christ, have no dealings with them. When Dr.
Frankl, on his philanthropic visit to the Jews of the East, went to see
their celebrated Pentateuch, and mentioned the fact to a Jewish
lady--"What!" she exclaimed: "have you been among the worshippers of the
pigeon? Take a purifying bath!" Regarding Gerizim as the place which
God had chosen (John iv. 20), they alone can keep up the old tradition
of the _sacrificial_ passover. For long centuries, since the Fall of
Jerusalem, it is only on Gerizim that the Paschal lambs and kids have
been actually slain and eaten, as they are to this day, and will be,
till, not long hence, the whole tribe disappears.
FOOTNOTES:
[389] Hos. iv. 4; v. 1, "Hear ye this, O priests ... ye have been a
snare on Mizpah," etc.; vi. 9, "The company of the priests murder by
the way to Shechem."
[390] Hos. x. 10 (so R.V., and in the main the versions after the Hebrew
margin). LXX., ἐν τῷ παιδεύεσθαι αὐτοὺς ἐν ταῖς δύσιν ἀδικίαις αὐτῶν;
Vulg., "_cum corripientur propter duas iniquitates suas_"; A.V., "When
they shall bind themselves in their two furrows." I believe that the
"_two_ iniquities" may mean _two_ cherubs at Bethel. See x. 15: "So
shall Bethel do unto you because of the evil of your evil."
[391] Hos. xi. 8-11.
[392] 2 Kings xvii. 1 is inconsistent with xv. 30, 33, and it is
wholly useless for our purpose to enter into complicated chronological
hypotheses, every one of which may be erroneous.
[393] Schrader, _K. A. T._, p. 255.
[394] _Seder Olam_, xxii. 2; 2 Chron. xxx. 6-11.
[395] See Herod., ii. 137; called So (Heb., Sô or Seve) in 2 Kings xvii.
4. Perhaps Shebek, the founder of the twenty-fifth dynasty. LXX., Σηγώρ;
Vulg., _Sua_; Manetho, _Sabachon_. In the _Eponym Canon_ he is called an
Egyptian general, _Sibakhi_, who helped Gaza against Assyria, and was
defeated. The _ka_ appended at the end of his name (Egyptian Shaba-ka)
is thought by some to be the Cushite article. The race of the priest
Hirhor died out with Piankhi, and the Ethiopians elected a noble named
Kashta. Shabak was his son. He conquered Sais, and burnt his rival
Bek-en-raut alive (B.C. 724). His dynasty ruled for fifty years; he was
succeeded by Sevechus (Shabatok), and he by Tehrak (Tirhakah).
[396] His name means "Salmân, pardon." We have no monuments or
inscriptions of this king; only an imperial weight.
[397] Mic. v. 1.
[398] Hos. xiii. 13.
[399] Hos. xiii. 7-11. The prophecy is rhythmic, though not written in
actual poetry.
[400] Till the discovery of the Assyrian records, Sargon (Sharru-kênu,
'the faithful king') was but a name. The Jews knew but little of him. He
is but once mentioned in Scripture (Isa. xx. 1), and was probably
confused by some Jews with other kings. Yet he reigned sixteen years
(722-705), and his records give the annals of fifteen campaigns. In 720
he crushed a confederacy headed by Yahubid of Hamath, and reduced that
city to a "heap of ruins." He then advanced against Hanno, King of Gaza,
who was in alliance with Sabaco, and defeated the combined forces of the
Philistines and Egyptians at Raphia, half-way between Gaza and the
Wady-el-Arîsh, "the torrent [_nachal_] of Egypt." Sargon was at the time
too much occupied with other enemies to pursue his advantage over Egypt;
for Armenia, Media, and other countries needed his attention. This
encouraged Ashdod to rebel, and its king, Azuri, refused his tribute
(see Isa. xx. 1). Sargon deposed him, and put his brother Ahimit in his
place. Relying on Egyptian promises, Philistia joined Judah, Edom, and
Moab in defying Assyria. They deposed Ahimit as an Assyrian nominee, and
put Yaman in his place. Egypt, as usual, failed to help, and in 711 the
Assyrian Turtan, or Commander-in-chief, took Ashdod after three years'
resistance, and carried its people into captivity. The punishment of
Egypt was reserved for the subsequent reigns of Esarhaddon (681-668) and
Assurbanipal. See Driver's _Isaiah xlv._ (Isa. xx.). Isa. xiv. 29-32 is
an ode of triumph for the Fall of Philistia.
[401] Hos. xiii. 16.
[402] See De Hincks in _Journ. of Sacr. Lit._, October 1858; Layard,
_Nin. and Bab._, i. 148.
[403] Isa. xxviii. 1-4.
[404] 2 Kings xvii. 13, "by all the prophets, and all the _seers_,"
(_chôseh_). Hāvernick thinks that the _nebi'îm_ were such _officially_.
[405] See Amos ii. 4, 5; Isa. xxviii. 15; Jer. xvi. 19, 20; Ezek. xx.
13-30, etc.
[406] Deut. xxvi. 5.
[407] Isa. xli. 14.
[408] Hos. xi. 9.
[409] See my _Minor Prophets_, 6-97.
[410] Not as in A.V., "Habor, _by_ the river of Gozan."
[411] 2 Kings xvii. 6. The LXX. has "rivers" and "mountains": ἐν Ἀλαὲ
καὶ ἐν Ἀβὼρ ποταμοῖς Γωζὰν καὶ ὅρη Μήδων. The river is not Ezekiel's
Chebar. These deportations _en masse_ of a whole population, with
their women and children, their waggons and flocks, are depicted on
Sargon's series of tablets in his splendid palace at Khorsabad.
[412] Ezra iv. 10. "The great and noble Asnapper" of the passage is
either some Assyrian general, or a confusion of the name Assurbanipal.
[413] 2 Kings xvii. 9. Heb., "covered"; A.V. and R.V., "did secretly,"
rather "perfidiously"; LXX., ἠμφιέσαντο λόγους ἀδίκους κατὰ κύριον;
Vulg., _Et offenderunt verbis non rectis dominum suum_.
[414] Star-worship is not mentioned in the Book of the Covenant (Exod.
xx.-xxiii.) or the oldest sections of the Mosaic Law. It is first
forbidden in Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3, when contact with Syrians and
Assyrians made it known (comp. Job xxxi. 26-28; Jer. viii. 2, xix. 13;
Zeph. i. 5). The language of 2 Kings vii.-xxiii. frequently reflects
the prohibitions of Deuteronomy (see Deut. xii. 2, 30, 31, iv. 19, v.
7, 8, xvi. 21, xviii. 10, xxxi. 16, etc.)
[415] In 2 Kings xvii. 11, for "they did wicked things," the LXX. has
κοινωνοὺς (_i.e._, _qedeshîm_) ἐχάραξαν καὶ ἑταιρίδας (_qedeshôth_);
_i.e._, they had depraved _hieroduli_ of both sexes. Comp. Hos. iv.
14; Gen. xxxviii. 21 (where the allusion is to one of the votaries of
Asherah).
[416] Bishop Lightfoot, _Sermons_, p. 267.
[417] "La quale Religione se ne Principi della Republica Christiana si
fusse mantenuta, secondo che dal dottore d'essa ne fu ordinato,
sarebbero gli State e le Republiche Christiane più unite e più felici
assai ch' elle non sono" (_Discorsi_, i. 12).
[418] 2 Kings xvii. 24. Comp. xviii. 34. Hence the later Jews
comprehensively called the Samaritans Cuthites. Comp. 2 Kings xix. 13;
Isa. xxxvii. 13.
[419] Heliopolis, Ptolemy, v. 18, § 7; Isa. xxxvi. 19. Here, according
to the Chaldæan legends, Xisuthrus buried his tablets about the
Creation, etc.
[420] From Ezra iv. 2 some infer that the main immigrants were
introduced by Esarhaddon, who did not succeed till B.C. 681. He claims
to have colonised Syria.
[421] So we see from 2 Kings xix. 13, which applies to the reign of
Hezekiah.
[422] See Appendix, "The Golden Calves."
[423] He uses the agency of "the great and noble Asnapper" (Ezra iv.
10) for the deportation (see Botta, 145; Layard, _Nin. and Bab._, i.
148; Dr. Hincks, _Jour. of Sacr. Lit._, October 1858), unless Asnapper
be a confusion for Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus).
[424] Hos. iii. 4.
[425] See Jer. xlix. 19, l. 44; Prov. xxii. 13, etc.
[426] Lit., "Daughter-huts" (Selden, _De Dis Syr._, ii. 7), but probably
a transliteration. Zarpanit--"She who gives seed"--was Aphrodite
Pandemos (Mylitta--Herod., i. 199). The Rabbis--who only guess--say she
represented "the Clucking Hen"--_i.e._, the Pleiades. There does not
seem to be any connection between Succoth and "Sakkuth," the various
reading in Amos v. 26, which seems to be the Assyrian Moloch.
[427] Said to be worshipped under the form of a cock.
[428] LXX., Ἐβλαζέρ. Jarchi says these deities were worshipped under
base animal forms--but it is more than doubtful.
[429] The Rabbis, from Exod. xxiii. 13; Josh. xxiii. 7, thought they
were bound to give scornful nicknames to heathen deities. Hence such
changes as Kir-Heres for Kir-Cheres, Beelzebub for Beelzebul, Bethaven
for Bethel, Bosheth for Baal, etc.
[430] Not as in A.V., "of the lowest of them," but "of all classes."
Comp. 1 Kings xii. 31.
[431] In 2 Kings xvii. 31-38 we again find repeated references to
Deuteronomy (iv. 23, v. 32, x. 20, etc.).
[432] Ezra iv. 1. The actual word "Samaritans" occurs only once in the
Old Testament, in 2 Kings xvii. 29.
[433] See Neh. xiii. 4-9, 28, 29; Jos., _Antt._, XI. vii. 2. Josephus
makes Manasseh a brother of the high priest Jaddua (B.C. 333).
[434] Jos., _Antt._, IX. xiv. 3, XII. v. 5, XIII. ix. 1, XX. vi.,
XVIII. ii. 2. The bitterly hostile relations between Jews and
Samaritans in the time of Christ are illustrated by Luke ix. 52-54.