Lesson 6 – The Fall of the Northern Kingdom

o  We have moved into the wider historical story and to 2 Kings.

  • Preparing to read the story

Read paragraphs 1-6 of the "Bible Background," page 24. On the map below locate Assyria. Think about:

• How did Judah and the Northern Kingdom respond differently to the threat of Assyria?

• What was the result of each nation's response?

• How do you think God felt about how each nation handled the threat?

  • Reading  & Interpreting the story

Read 2 Kings 17:1-18.
Analyze the story using some or all of these questions:

• In what ways is Hoshea's "becoming king" significant for the fall of the Northern Kingdom? (See 17:1-2 and 15:29-30.)

• For three years Samaria was under siege while their King Hoshea was in an Assyrian prison (17:4-5).
How do you think this affected the people of Samaria as they fought for their lives without a king?

• In verse 7, why is Israel's sin named in the context of deliverance from Egypt?

 

Examining pagan worship practices

The narrator of 2 Kings 17 places part of the blame on those who practiced pagan worship activities. In verses 9-11 and 16, what does the writer say of''high places/' "every green tree," and "sacred poles"? The NRSV footnote for verse 16 tells us the Hebrew word for sacred pole was Asherah. Asherah was a Canaanite goddess and a consort of the god

Baal. The word can refer to the goddess, a tree planted in her honor (Deuteronomy 16:21), or a carved pole to represent her. For other examples of comments on this practice, see 1 Kings 12:25-33; 14:22-23; and Jeremiah 2:20; 3:6; and 17:1-2.

The writer was also concerned about making "their sons and daughters pass through fire" (17:17). See Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10; and 2 Kings 16:3 for other examples of this practice.

 

 

  • Making the story your own

 

Identifying contemporary issues

 

In today's world we may find it strange to think of a tree or a wooden carving as a threat to our faith. But we still face temptations that lead us from our focus on God.

Think about:
What are the "high places," "green trees," or "sacred poles" in our culture that tempt us from God's ways ?
How do we deal with these influences?

 

 

 

Memory verse: Amos 5:14

“Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of host, will be with you, just as you have said.”

 

Bible Background (taken from Journey through the Bible Book 2, Christian Board of Publications, 1995, p. 24)

1The rise of Assyria in the eighth century B.C.E. took a major turn when Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 B.C.E.) came to the throne. Within a few years, Phoenicia and North Israel were paying tribute to Assyria once again, and North Israel had lost some of the Galilean territory and perhaps some of the Mediterranean coast to the Assyrians. By 734, Dam­ascus and North Israel were at war with Assyria.

 

2By 732, Damascus had been besieged and cap­tured by Assyrian armies. The capital of North Israel, the very large and well-fortified city of Samaria that King Omri had built and made his capital over a hundred years earlier, escaped this time, but only by paying heavy tribute to Assyria. The kings of North Israel sought help from Egypt, but that maneuver only angered the Assyrians and caused them to return. By 725 B.C.E., while Shalmaneser V was the Assyrian king, the city of Samaria was besieged. It held out for three years, but eventually fell.

 

3Assyria had the policy of taking large parts of the population of rebel states and marching them to locations far away. That is what happened to the population of North Israel and the city of Samaria: Tens of thousands of them were scattered through­out the Assyrian empire. In their place, the Assyrians settled other peoples from other parts of the empire. This practice made it easier for the Assyrians to control their conquered territories and peoples, for it weakened the spirit of the popu­lation, disorganized them politically, and took away their shared history and traditions and religion.

 

Samaria was a well-fortified city, set atop a large hill in a rich valley north and west of Shechem. The city had prospered under Omri and his de­scendants, and it recovered after the revolution carried out by Jehu and again became very pros­perous. But as Tiglath-pileser III came to the Assyrian throne in 744, economic and social and religious decline were about to set in. The prophet Hosea witnessed the terrible events of those days, warned the people against turning again to the worship of the gods of fertility, and pled with them to continue to worship the God of Israel, Yahweh, who had brought them from Egypt, given them this good land, and demanded justice, fairness, and love of neighbors from them.

 

But Hosea could not bring the people back to faithfulness. When the Assyrian armies gathered

around Samaria in 725 B.C.E., Hosea saw that there was no way to escape the judgment. After three years, it was over.

 

6Not all the people of North Israel and Samaria were taken captive by the Assyrians and settled in other lands. There was one particular group that moved south to Judah as the Assyrians carried out their destruction of Samaria: teaching Levites, faith­ful worshipers of Yahweh who sought all the time to keep the people on the right path. These Levites worked to gather up, refine, and re-issue the tradi­tions of Israel, going all the way back to their ancestors, Moses and Aaron. They were the "Deuteronomists" or the "Deuteronomistic Histo­rians," as they have been called, because we owe much of the contents of the book of Deuteronomy to them. And they also provided the present shape of the books of Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, and 1-2 Kings, using older stories, traditions, lists, and poems and shaping them into the connected his­tory of Israel's life under God that began with Moses' death and continued on to the fall of the city of Jerusalem, over one hundred years after the fall of the city of Samaria.

 

7It was these Levites who gave us the story found in 2 Kings 17, telling of the fall of the city of Samaria and explaining why God let the Assyrians capture the town and scatter its inhabitants through­out the Assyrian empire. Why did Samaria fall? Because the people of North Israel •worshiped idols, let the fertility religion of Canaan take over their lives, turned their backs upon the God of Israel, and failed to listen to and follow the words of God's prophets who had been sent to warn them. For the Levite theologians of North Israel much was at stake: God's people had once again failed to be the righteous and faithful people God had called them to be, and as a result they had to suffer the conse­quences of their failure.

 

8This is a religious position that has great moral appeal. We believe in justice and want the world to display justice, where righteousness brings rewards and misdeeds bring punishment. And in the divine perspective, taking the long view, we do believe that this is true. But we have to be careful not to moralize historical events too quickly. Much that happens in the world happens because of multiple causes, and often the causes may be entirely ob­scure. It is therefore better to say that North Israel fell to the Assyrians because of its interior and exterior weakness and because of the brutal mili­tary policies of the Assyrians. Was God involved? Of course, we affirm in faith. God was present with the people of Israel as their guiding, judging, for­giving, and loving God. But God was not control­ling the actions of all the parties.

 

  Back to lesson          

 Scripture

2 Kings                                                                                       

                                                                                    CHAPTER 17                                                                                    

 

1 In the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel; he reigned nine years. 

2 He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, yet not like the kings of Israel who were before him. 

3 King Shalmaneser of Assyria came up against him; Hoshea became his vassal, and paid him tribute. 

4 But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to King So of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria confined him and imprisoned him. 

5 Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. 

6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. 

7 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

8 and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had introduced. 

9 The people of Israel secretly did things that were not right against the LORD their God. They built for themselves high places at all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city; 

10 they set up for themselves pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree; 

11 there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the LORD carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger; 

12 they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, "You shall not do this." 

13 Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, "Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I commanded your ancestors and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets." 

14 They would not listen but were stubborn, as their ancestors had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God. 

15 They despised his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their ancestors, and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false; they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do as they did. 

16 They rejected all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves cast images of two calves; they made a sacred pole, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. 

17 They made their sons and their daughters pass through fire; they used divination and augury; and they sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger. 

18 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone. 

 

return