Which assyrian king destroyed the northern kingdom of israel

As judgment for their waywardness, God allowed the powerful Assyrians to destroy and conquer the northern ten tribes, as well as many cities in the southern tribes of Judah:. He destroyed many cities, brutally killing their inhabitants, and left Israel with only the capital of Samaria intact.

The Assyrians marched on Samaria, slaughtered its inhabitants, and destroyed the remainder of the northern kingdom. The Israelites who remained in Israel were forcibly mixed with other religious and ethnic groups and became the hated Samaritans of the New Testament. Those who were deported disappeared from history. He claimed to have destroyed 46 walled cities and deported more than , captives.

Discover the Bible in light of its historical and cultural context! Your support now will help strengthen marriages, equip parents to raise godly children, save preborn babies, reach out to orphans and more by supporting our daily broadcasts, online and print resources, counseling, and life-changing initiatives. In the third millennium B. Their circumstances, however, forbade them to indulge in the effeminate ease of Babylon; from beginning to end they were a race of warriors, mighty in muscle and courage, abounding in proud hair and beard, standing straight, stern and solid on their monuments, and bestriding with tremendous feet the east-Mediterranean world.

Their history is one of kings and slaves, wars and conquests, bloody victories and sudden defeat. Assyria first became an independent nation between and B. Berrett, Discovering the World of the Bible, p. Other powerful kings who left their mark on Assyrian history included Tiglath-pileser I — B. The most vital part of the Assyrian government was its army. Warfare was a science to the leaders of Assyria. Infantry, chariots, cavalry introduced by Ashurnasirpal to aid the infantry and chariots , sappers, armor made from iron, siege machines, and battering rams were all developed or perfected by the Assyrians.

Strategy and tactics were also well understood by the Assyrian officers. See Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, — But it was not just Assyrian effectiveness in warfare that struck terror to the hearts of the Near Eastern world.

They were savage and brutal as well. The loyalty of the troops was secured by dividing a large part of the spoils among them; their bravery was ensured by the general rule of the Near East that all captives in war might be enslaved or slain.

Soldiers were rewarded for every severed head they brought in from the field, so that the aftermath of a victory generally witnessed the wholesale decapitation of fallen foes. Most often the prisoners, who would have consumed much food in a long campaign, and would have constituted a danger and nuisance in the rear, were dispatched after the battle; they knelt with their backs to their captors, who beat their heads in with clubs, or cut them off with cutlasses.

Scribes stood by to count the number of prisoners taken and killed by each soldier, and apportioned the booty accordingly; the king, if time permitted, presided at the slaughter. The nobles among the defeated were given more special treatment: their ears, noses, hands and feet were sliced off, or they were thrown from high towers, or they and their children were beheaded, or flayed alive, or roasted over a slow fire.

Just as the Romans took thousands of prisoners into lifelong slavery after their victories, and dragged others to the Circus Maximus to be torn to pieces by starving animals, so the Assyrians seemed to find satisfaction—or a necessary tutelage for their sons—in torturing captives, blinding children before the eyes of their parents, flaying men alive, roasting them in kilns, chaining them in cages for the amusement of the populace, and then sending the survivors off to execution.

As for the others who remained alive, I offered them as a funerary sacrifice; … their lacerated members have I given unto the dogs, the swine, the wolves. I cut off the hands of all those whom I capture alive. Assyria was at the height of its power, and its reputation for terror and brutality should have been sufficient to turn Israel back to their God, but they would not heed. Under the reign of Tiglath-pileser II, Assyria began consolidating its power in the western part of the empire.

Around B. But four years later, the two Syrian states rebelled, and once again Tiglath-pileser moved in. Damascus was conquered, as was part of the territory of the Northern Kingdom, and the people were carried off into captivity see 2 Kings It seems to have been Tiglath-pileser who originated large-scale deportations of conquered peoples. The practice of large deportations continued under Shalmaneser and later Sargon II, successors to Tiglath-pileser who also played an important role in the history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Because of the revolt of Hoshea, king of Israel, Shalmaneser laid siege to Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom. The siege lasted three years, during which time Shalmaneser died and was succeeded by Sargon II. Sargon II finally destroyed Samaria and carried the survivors captive into Assyria see 2 Kings —6 , thus ending the history of Israel in the Old Testament and setting the stage for the loss of the ten northern tribes.

Not long after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom Israel , the Southern Kingdom Judah was also threatened with destruction by Assyria.

Sennacherib, successor to Sargon II, attacked Judah during the reign of King Hezekiah and destroyed most of her principal cities. Through the intervention of the Lord, however, Sennacherib was unable to capture Jerusalem see Notes and Commentary on 2 Kings Having failed to conquer Judah, Sennacherib returned home to Nineveh, capital of Assyria at the time. Nineveh, the city in which Jonah had preached repentance, was the last capital of the Assyrian Empire Ashur and Calah were the first two capitals.

The epitaph written over every one of its kings was:. I King "and he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin by which he had made Israel to sin. It was king Ahab who introduced Baal worship to them.

And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians; and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a wooden image. The last king was Hoshea 2 Ki The petty wars of the past, wars with Syria and Edom, Ammon and Philistia, were now to give way to war on an ominous new scale.

A world empire was being gathered into the ruthless hands of the Assyrians. The Assyrians hauled them away into captivity BC. But the Lord always reminded them of why judgment came:. II Ki "For so it was that the children 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; and they had feared other gods, and had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the LORD had cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.

Also the children of Israel secretly did against the LORD their God things that were not right, and they built for themselves high places in all their cities, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree. There they burned incense on all the high places, like the nations whom the LORD had carried away before them; and they did wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger, for they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, "You shall not do this thing.

Yet the LORD testified against Israel and against Judah, by all of His prophets, every seer, saying, "Turn from your evil ways, and keep My commandments and My statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by My servants the prophets.

And they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He had made with their fathers, and His testimonies which He had testified against them; they followed idols, became idolaters, and went after the nations who were all around them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them that they should not do like them. So they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, made for themselves a molded image and two calves, made a wooden image and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger.