Fall of Samaria

After two centuries of idolatry under nineteen evil kings, the northern kingdom of Israel was brought to its end by Assyria. In 727 BC Hoshea, the last king of Israel, secretly approached Egypt for help and stopped paying tribute. Shalmaneser V of Assyria laid siege to the capital Samaria — a hill-top fortress built by Omri — from 725 BC. Shalmaneser died in 722 before the city fell; his successor Sargon II finished the siege the same year and recorded the taking of "27,290 inhabitants" of Samaria in his royal annals. Israel’s people were carried away to Halah, to the Habor river, and to the cities of the Medes (2 Kgs 17:6). Assyrian colonists from Babylon, Cuthah, and elsewhere were settled in Israel’s place; intermarrying with the Israelites left in the land, they became the people the New Testament knows as the Samaritans. 2 Kings 17 pauses the historical narrative to deliver the verdict: "This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God" (v. 7). The northern tribes never returned as a kingdom; the prophets Amos and Hosea had warned of this judgement a generation earlier.