Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)

According to the Hebrew Bible, for the first sixty years after the split, the kings of Judah tried to re-establish their authority over the northern kingdom, and there was perpetual war between them. For the following eighty years, there was no open war between them, as, for the most part, Judah had engaged in a military alliance with Aram-Damascus, opening a northern front against Israel.[22] The conflict between Israel and Judah was temporarily settled when Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, allied himself with the reigning house of Israel, Ahab, through marriage. Later, Jehosophat's son and successor, Jehoram of Judah, married Ahab's daughter Athaliah, cementing the alliance.[22] However, the sons of Ahab were slaughtered by Jehu following his coup d'état around 840 BCE.[23]

After being defeated by Hazael, Israel began a period of progressive recovery following the campaigns against Aram-Damascus of Adad-nirari III.[24] This ultimately led to a period of major territorial expansion under Jeroboam II, who extended the kingdom's possessions throughout the Northern Transjordan. Following Jeroboam II's death, the Kingdom experienced a period of decline as a result of sectional rivalries and struggles for the throne.[25]

Jehu's delegation to Shalmaneser III, Black Obelisk, 841–840 BCE.

In c. 732 BCE, king Pekah of Israel, while allied with Rezin, king of Aram, threatened Jerusalem. Ahaz, king of Judah, appealed to Tiglath-Pileser III, the king of Assyria, for help. After Ahaz paid tribute to Tiglath-Pileser,[26] Tiglath-Pileser sacked Damascus and Israel, annexing Aram[27] and territory of the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh in Gilead including the desert outposts of Jetur, Naphish and Nodab. People from these tribes, including the Reubenite leader, were taken captive and resettled in the region of the Khabur River system, in Halah, Habor, Hara and Gozan (1 Chronicles 5:26). Tiglath-Pilesar also captured the territory of Naphtali and the city of Janoah in Ephraim, and an Assyrian governor was placed over the region of Naphtali. According to 2 Kings 16:9 and 2 Kings 15:29, the population of Aram and the annexed part of Israel was deported to Assyria.[28]

The tribute of Northern Kingdom King "Jehu of the people of the land of Omri" (Akkadian: 𒅀𒌑𒀀 𒈥 𒄷𒌝𒊑𒄿) as depicted on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 841–840 BCE.[29] This is "the only portrayal we have in ancient Near Eastern art of an Israelite or Judaean monarch".[30]

The remainder of the northern kingdom of Israel continued to exist within the reduced territory as an independent kingdom until around 720 BCE, when it was again invaded by Assyria and the rest of the population deported. During the three-year siege of Samaria in the territory of Ephraim by the Assyrians, Shalmaneser V died and was succeeded by Sargon II, who himself records the capture of that city thus: "Samaria I looked at, I captured; 27,280 men who dwelt in it I carried away" into Assyria. Thus, around 720 BCE, after two centuries, the kingdom of the ten tribes came to an end. Some of the Israelite captives were resettled in the Khabur region, and the rest in the land of the Medes, thus establishing Hebrew communities in Ecbatana and Rages. The Book of Tobit additionally records that Sargon had taken other captives from the northern kingdom to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, in particular Tobit from the town of Thisbe in Naphtali.

The Jewish Bible relates that the population of the Kingdom of Israel was exiled, becoming known as the Ten Lost Tribes. To the south, the Tribe of Judah, the Tribe of Simeon (that was "absorbed" into Judah), the Tribe of Benjamin and the people of the Tribe of Levi, who lived among them of the original Israelite nation, remained in the southern Kingdom of Judah. The Kingdom of Judah continued to exist as an independent state until 586 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Samaritan tradition states that much of the population of the Northern Kingdom of Israel remained in place after the Exile, including the Tribes of Naphtali, Menasseh, Benjamin and Levi – being the progenitors of the modern Samaritans. In their book The Bible Unearthed, Israeli authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman estimate that only a fifth (about 40,000) of the population of the northern Kingdom of Israel were actually resettled out of the area during the two deportation periods under Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II.[4]^: 221 Many of the Northern Tribes also fled south to the Kingdom of Judah; Jerusalem seems to have expanded in size five-fold during this period, requiring a new wall to be built, and a new source of water Siloam to be provided by King Hezekiah.[6]

Part of the gift-bearing Israelite delegation of King Jehu, Black Obelisk, 841–840 BCE.[31]

In their book The Bible Unearthed, Israeli authors Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman estimate that only a fifth (about 40,000) of the population of the northern Kingdom of Israel were actually resettled out of the area during the two deportation periods under Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II.[4] No known non-Biblical record exists of the Assyrians having exiled people from four of the tribes of Israel: Dan, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun. Descriptions of the deportation of people from Reuben, Gad, Manasseh, Ephraim and Naphtali indicate that only a portion of these tribes were deported, and the places to which they were deported are known locations given in the accounts. The deported communities are mentioned as still existing at the time of the composition of the Books of Kings and Chronicles and did not disappear by assimilation. 2 Chronicles 30:1–18 explicitly mentions northern Israelites who had been spared by the Assyrians, in particular people of Ephraim, Manasseh, Asher, Issachar and Zebulun, and how members of the latter three returned to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah.[32]

Deportation of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrian Empire

The religious climate of the Kingdom of Israel appears to have followed two major trends. The first, that of worship of Yahweh. The Jewish Bible, however, states that part of the northern Israelites also adored Baal – as detailed in the Hebrew Bible (1 Kings 16:31) and in the Baal cycle discovered at Ugarit.[33] The religion of ancient Israel is sometimes referred to by modern scholars as Yahwism.[33]

The Jewish Bible also states that Ahab allowed the cult worship of Baal to become acceptable of the kingdom. His wife Jezebel was the daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre and a devotee to Baal worship (1 Kings 16:31).[34]

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According to the Bible, the Northern Kingdom had 19 kings across 9 different dynasties throughout its 208 years of existence.

The genealogy of the kings of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judea, the Kingdom of Israel and the kings of the Kingdom of Judah. Most historians follow either of the older chronologies established by William F. Albright or Edwin R. Thiele, or the newer chronologies of Gershon Galil and Kenneth Kitchen, all of which are shown below. All dates are BC/BCE.

• Davies, Philip (2015). The History of Ancient Israel. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-567-65582-0.
• Dever, William (2017). Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah. SBL Press. ISBN 978-0-88414-217-1.
• Hasegawa, Shuichi; Levin, Christoph; Radner, Karen, eds. (2018). The Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-3-11-056660-4.
• Mazar, Amihai (2010). "Archaeology and the Biblical Narrative: The Case of the United Monarchy". In Kratz, Reinhard G.; Spieckermann, Hermann (eds.). One God – One Cult – One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-022358-3.
• Roberts, J. J. M. (2016). "The Divided Monarchy". In Niditch, Susan (ed.). The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 197–212. ISBN 978-0-470-65677-8.
• Shen, Peidong; Lavi, Tal; Kivisild, Toomas; Chou, Vivian; Sengun, Deniz; Gefel, Dov; Shpirer, Issac; Woolf, Eilon; Hillel, Jossi; Feldman, Marcus W.; Oefner, Peter J. (2004). "Reconstruction of patrilineages and matrilineages of Samaritans and other Israeli populations from Y-Chromosome and mitochondrial DNA sequence Variation". Human Mutation. 24 (3): 248–260. doi:10.1002/humu.20077. ISSN 1059-7794. PMID 15300852. S2CID 1571356.