The Destruction of Samaria

2 Kings 17

            At last, Samaria falls. Hoshea, the last king of Israel, had made himself a vassal of the Assyrians. Vassalage was an arrangement whereby a lesser nation made itself subject to a stronger nation for protection. That protection came at a price: loyalty, troops in warfare, tribute money. Hoshea thought he could get a better deal elsewhere, rebelled, and paid the price. That, at least, is the geopolitical story.

            The real story is that the Lord’s patience with Israel’s idolatry had finally run out. That’s the gist of this chapter—a veritable catalogue of the ways that Israel had chased false gods. And frankly relying on a foreign power for protection just made all the other false gods worse. Enough was enough already.

            Two things bear comment. First, there’s a note in verse 23 that as of the writing of 2 Kings, the northern tribes were still in Assyria. Now, it is almost impossible to say for certain when 2 Kings was written. Some people used to think that Jeremiah wrote it around the time of the fall of the southern kingdom; others think it was some anonymous person after the exile. In the first case it’s 150 years later; in the latter case, it’s over 200 years. The point is the same: the northern tribes didn’t seem to be coming back, and, indeed, they never did. They were unfruitful branches, cut off and thrown into the fire, to paraphrase Jesus. By the end of this week the tree of God’s people will be reduced to a stump, when the southern kingdom is also exiled. But! But! Isaiah 11:1, “A shoot will come from the stump of Jesse.” More on that later.

            Second, we read that the Assyrians relocated other captive peoples to Samaria. This chapter explains why there was such hostility between Jews and Samaritans in Jesus’ day: the Samaritans weren’t ethnically Israelites and their worship was a mix of their native religions and the religion of Israel. One of the lessons that we will observe Israel learning as their history progresses is the importance of remaining pure. Such purity becomes an obsession by Jesus’ day, and the Samaritans become a symbol of losing that purity.