Lesson
The Fall of Samaria
A three-year siege. The city is taken in Hezekiah's sixth year. Israel is carried to Assyria, and other peoples are brought in. 722 BC, with two Assyrian names to sort out.
October 7, 2026
Hoshea kills Pekah and reigns in his place. The book says he did evil, yet not like the kings before him. Shalmaneser king of Assyria comes up, and Hoshea becomes his servant and pays tribute. Then Hoshea sends messengers to So, king of Egypt, and stops the yearly gift. Shalmaneser binds him in prison.
The king of Assyria goes through all the land, comes to Samaria, and besieges it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea he captures it and carries Israel away to Assyria, and he places them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. The parallel in the next chapter dates the same siege by Judah's clock. It begins in Hezekiah's fourth year, which is Hoshea's seventh, and the city is taken in Hezekiah's sixth year, Hoshea's ninth. Two clocks, one fall. That is useful. It ties the last northern king to a southern king whose Assyrian crisis we can date.
The chapter then stops the narrative and explains. This happened because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the customs of the nations and of the kings of Israel. They built high places. They served idols. They made their sons and daughters pass through the fire. They despised His statutes and the He made with their fathers. The LORD warned them by every prophet. They would not hear. So He removed them out of His sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah. And Judah does not take the warning. The narrator says so in the same breath.
The king of Assyria brings people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settles them in the cities of Samaria. Lions kill some of them. A priest of the old worship is sent back to teach them the law of the god of the land. They fear the LORD and serve their own gods. The mixed worship of the later Samaritans has this chapter as its biblical start. The New Testament's tension with Samaria is not a sudden prejudice. It is this history, plus centuries, plus Jesus walking through it anyway.
The year 722 is as firm as Assyrian chronology gets. Which king put his name on the capture is argued. The deportation is not in doubt.
This lesson's home is Timeline.