The last king of Israel descends the stage and the lions of the lord, roaming wild, take over the territory and terrify the new arrivals to the land.
Who or what is really the lord of this land?
Today’s post is epic and complex.
Caffeinate first.
Hoseah (his name means ‘Please help!’) son of Elah, is the 19th and last king of Israel. He’s a puppet king installed by the Assyrians.
He’s not to be confused with the prophet Hosea, who likely lived either just around that time or a few years earlier. His prophecies are coming up soon in his own book. Hosea was not a fan of the king’s choice to go with Assyria and he was vocal about it: “Assyria will not save us; we will not mount horses” (Hosea 14:4).
But the prophet, like others before him and since, including the many we’ll be hearing more from soon, will not be listened to.
Assyrian records confirm the biblical account of how Hoseah became king. Under King Ahaz, Judah had just rendered allegiance to Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria, when the Northern Kingdom under King Pekah, in league with King Rezin of Aram-Damascus, had attempted to coerce the Judean king into joint action against Assyria.
Hoshea, a general in Pekah's army, leads the pro Assyrian party in Samaria; he then removed Pekah by assassination; Tiglath-pileser rewarded Hoshea by making him king over Ephraim (a name used in Assyrian records for the entire northern kingdom), which had been reduced to smaller dimensions. Israel, like Judah, is now a vassal state of the superpower.
A few years later, with some political changes on the horizon, Hoseah appealed to the other regional power, Egypt, for help. Big mistake. The puppet king is immediately arrested by Assyria and dies in jail.
Samaria is attacked by the Assyrian army and after a three year siege (!) the 200 year old kingdom created by Jeroboam, ceases to exist.
There are records of some 30,000 people of Samaria who are exiled to Assyria, although scholars assume that these are just the numbers of the urban elites. Hundreds of thousands more, from all over the kingdom, were also dispersed, per the Assyrian population dispersion policy. This chapter in Kings is very cryptic about this terrible tragedy that in effect ripped off the major part of the historical tribal nation of the Hebrew people.
Many fled to Judah, where archeological findings point at a major increase in the scale of industry, domestic and public building in the 7th century BCE. The merging of the northern and southern traditions will eventually yield the religious story we now call Jewish, although the Judean version will determine the narrative.
And a smaller number of Israelites were left in Israel, scattered, but allowed to stay in their familiar settings, even if not on their ancestral lands.
They were not left there alone for long.
The Assyrians replaced the local population with other exiles from the rest of the empire. Multiple ethnic and religious groups are settled in the area, along with their many deities, rituals, recipes, and languages. Some are included in this chapter, with dazzling facts about lesser known deities and religious traditions:
The Babylonians built sacred huts for SakGud , a Mesopotamian god regarded as a divine tax collector. The Kuttites worshiped Nergal the underworld god of war, death, and disease. The people of Hamath prayed to Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing. The Avvites’ god Nibhaz may have been a dog, and the “People of Sipar burned their children as offerings to Adrammelech and Anamelech.” Kings 2 17:31.
Adrammelech means “Mighty King” and it’s unclear which Semitic god he really is, if, like Moloch, his worship included human sacrifice. With time he evolves to become an obscure arch-demon.
So what happens when all these different religions, practiced by traumatized refugees, resettled away from ancestry, all together in a new land under a harsh regime that demands obedience and taxes?
Chaos, at first. Lions attack. Nature erupts.
The authors of Kings, with their clear Judean socio-theological agenda, insert a bizarre but important story here about the weird way with which the religious law of the land was forced - and/or forged - into this emerging society made up of so many mythologies:
“When they first settled in Samaria, they did not worship YHWH so YHWH sent lions against them which killed some of them.
They said to the king of Assyria: “The nations which you deported and resettled in the towns of Samaria do not know the rules of the God of the land; therefore He has let lions loose against them which are killing them—for they do not know the rules of the God of the land.”
Remember: Lions graced the royal thrones of Judah and Israel. Lions became the symbol of Judah.
Was the threat of the lions, roaming wild in the empty ruins of cities and villages, so great that the people took on the local law of YHWH? Or does this tale tell us something about emergent religious traditions and how coercion works where compliance doesn’t?
The story continues with royal consent to the request for help - in the form of the establishment of a local temple and the arrival of a priest from Bethel, recalled from exile, to help resume the local worship.
Somehow these people will co-create sacred space and shared language, officially worshiping YHWH but what that means exactly is complicated.
The term ‘Lions Converts” - Gerei Arayot, would become rabbinic code for people who choose to become Jewish under duress. You won’t find them in this list of converts to Judaism but in essence this is the first time that we have a record of some formal religions induction.
But what seems to have emerged from this ‘harmonizing’ religious conversion attempt was not the Judean model of religions, based on the Southern ideology, that will live on to be the ‘Jewish’ way -- but a fusion of all these faiths.
Eventually, blended together over time into the local melting pot per Assyrian policy, some of these people will become what we call today - The Samaritans.
Lots to say about them and more will be discussed in future chapters and books. The Samaritans’ origin is still wildly contested:
“The Israeli biblical scholar Shemaryahu Talmon has supported the Samaritan tradition that they are mainly descended from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh who remained in Israel after the Assyrian conquest. He states that the description of them at 2 Kings 17:24 as foreigners is tendentious and intended to ostracize the Samaritans from those Israelites who returned from the Babylonian exile in 520 BCE.”
Other than the lions, the other staggering factor of these verses is the unique use of the term ‘the god of this land’. What this tells us that in the ancient ways of thinking - gods were perceived as territorial and geography based. Once the worshippers of one local god are exiled elsewhere - they take on the local customs - including worship.
Or at least in theory. In practice we know from this text and from numerous pieces of evidence left behind is that this tension between personal religious beliefs and public coercion were and still are at the core of many of the conflicts that ravage our world.
Between the Assyrian claim to one rule and one religions system - theirs - and the Judean’s desperate attempt to hold on to YHWH - the survivors of the exile had to find their path. This tension, far from over, will echo, like the roars of lions, across Jewish time - all the way to today.
In _____ we trust?
The (Actual) Birth of the Bible!
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