The Reign of King Hoshea of Israel and the Fall of Samaria

Above:  King Hoshea of Israel

Image in the Public Domain

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READING 1-2 SAMUEL, 1 KINGS, 2 KINGS 1-21, 1 CHRONICLES, AND 2 CHRONICLES 1-33

PART XCIX

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2 Kings 17:1-41

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“The end has come upon my people Israel;

I will never again pass by them.

The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,”

says the LORD God;

“the dead bodies shall be many;

in every place they shall be cast out in silence.”

–Amos 8:2b-3, Revised Standard Version–Second Catholic Edition (2002)

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King Ahaz of Judah (Reigned 743/735-727/715 B.C.E.)

King Pekah of Israel (Reigned 735-732 B.C.E.)

King Hoshea of Israel (Reigned 732-722 B.C.E.)

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Hoshea son of Elah deposed and killed King Pekah of Israel in 732 B.C.E.  Hoshea went on to become a vassal of King Shalmaneser V (reigned 727-722 B.C.E.) of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.  King Sargon II (reigned 722-705 B.C.E.) added Israel to the empire in 722 B.C.E.  Hoshea died in an Assyrian prison.

Historians and Biblical scholars have long tried to discern who “King So of Egypt” (verse 4) was.  Egyptian records include no such Pharaoh.  We could, of course, be reading a Hebrew version of an Egyptian name.  Furthermore, the relative dating (“in the ____ year of King ____ of ____) complicates the translation of ancient dates to our Gregorian calendar and the B.C.E./C.E. scale.  To make matters more confusing, even within 2 Kings and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, relative dating yields mutually exclusive dates, sometimes within a few verses of each other.  This would bother me if I were a Biblical literalist.  No, I know too much to be a fundamentalist.

2 Kings 17 drives home that the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel resulted mainly from persistent, collective sin.  The chapter also concludes that the fatal sins were baked into the schismatic kingdom from its founding, and that a series of bad kings made matters worse.  All of these arguments were major points of the Deuteronomic History.

We also read the origin of the Samaritan religion.  This information is essential to understanding much subsequent material in the Old Testament and the Gospels.

At the end of 2 Kings 17, Judah remained.  So did hope.  Hezekiah was the King of Judah.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

NOVEMBER 6, 2020 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF CHRISTIAN GREGOR, FATHER OF MORAVIAN CHURCH MUSIC

THE FEAST OF GIOVANNI GABRIELI AND HANS LEO HASSLER, COMPOSERS AND ORGANISTS; AND CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI AND HEINRICH SCHÜTZ, COMPOSERS AND MUSICIANS

THE FEAST OF HALFORD E. LUCCOCK, U.S. METHODIST MINISTER AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR

THE FEAST OF SAINT MAGDELEINE OF JESUS, FOUNDRESS OF THE LITTLE SISTERS OF JESUS

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