The Fall of Samaria

When Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, was told that Hoshea, the king of Israel, had sent secretly to So, the king of Egypt, asking for his help against him, he was very angry and marched against Samaria in the seventh year of Hoshea’s reign. When the king would not let him in, he besieged Samaria for three years and took it by force in the ninth year of Hoshea’s reign and the seventh year of Hezekiah king of Jerusalem. He utterly destroyed the government of the Israelites and moved the whole people into Media and Persia, and among them he took King Hoshea alive. When he had removed these people from their land, he brought other nations out of Cuthah, a place so called (for there is a river of that name in Persia), into Samaria and into the country of the Israelites. So the ten tribes of the Israelites were removed out of Judea nine hundred and forty-seven years after their forefathers came out of the land of Egypt, and eight hundred years after they took possession of this country under Joshua’s leadership; and, as I have already observed, two hundred and forty years, seven months and seven days after they had revolted from Rehoboam, the grandson of David, and given the kingdom to Jeroboam. Such was the end that overtook the Israelites when they had broken the laws and would not listen to the prophets, who foretold that this disaster would come on them if they did not give up their evil deeds. What gave birth to these evil deeds was the revolt they raised against Rehoboam, the grandson of David, when they set up his servant Jeroboam as their king; and he, by sinning against God and bringing them to imitate his bad example, made God their enemy, while Jeroboam himself suffered the punishment he justly deserved. [a]

The king of Assyria then invaded all Syria and Phoenicia as an enemy. This king’s name is also recorded in the archives of Tyre, for he marched against Tyre in the reign of Eluleus. Menander attests to it; when he wrote his Chronology and translated the archives of Tyre into Greek, he gives us the following history: “Eluleus, to whom they gave the name Pyas, reigned thirty-six years. When the Kittians revolted, this king sailed against them and brought them back into submission. In his reign Selampsas, king of Assyria, came and overran all Phoenicia in war, but made peace with them all and went back. Then Sidon and Arka and Old Tyre revolted from the Tyrians, with many other cities, and gave themselves up to the king of Assyria. So, when the Tyrians would not submit to him, the king came back and fell on them again, the Phoenicians having supplied him with sixty ships and eight hundred men to row them. The Tyrians came against them with twelve ships, and when the enemy’s ships were scattered, they took five hundred men prisoner, and the reputation of all the citizens of Tyre was increased by it. So the king of Assyria withdrew and set guards at the river and the aqueducts to keep the Tyrians from drawing water. This went on for five years, and still the Tyrians held out under the siege, and drank the water they had from the wells they dug.” This is what is written in the Tyrian archives about Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. [f]

The Cutheans who were moved into Samaria (that is the name they have been called by to this day, because they were brought out of the country called Cuthah, which is a country of Persia with a river of the same name in it) brought their own gods into Samaria, each according to their nations, which were five in number. By worshiping them, as was the custom of their own countries, they provoked the supreme God to anger and displeasure against them, for a plague seized them and destroyed them. When they found no cure for their miseries, they learned from the oracle that they ought to worship the supreme God as the way to their deliverance. So they sent envoys to the king of Assyria and asked him to send them some of the priests of the Israelites whom he had taken captive. When he sent them, and the people had been taught by them the laws and the holy worship of God, they worshiped him zealously, and the plague stopped at once. They still keep the very same customs to this very day, and are called in the Hebrew tongue Cutheans, but in the Greek tongue Samaritans. They shift with the turn of fortune: when they see the Jews prospering, they call them kinsmen, as though they were descended from Joseph and so had an original kinship with them. But when they see them brought low, they say they are in no way related to them, and that the Jews have no right to expect any kindness or mark of kinship from them; and they declare that they are settlers who came from other countries. But we will have a more fitting opportunity to speak of them later. [k]