Before He Shall Have Knowledge To Cry... Part II

JEHU DESTROYS THE PRIESTS OF BAAL AND THEIR WORSHIP PLACES IN ISRAEL

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Jehu did not stop there.  He was determined to eradicate the worship of Baal in the kingdom by trickery if necessary.  (II Kings 10:18-31)
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18 And Jehu gathered all the people together, and said unto them, Ahab served Baal a little; but Jehu shall serve him much.  19 Now therefore call unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his priests; let none be wanting: for I have a great sacrifice to do to Baal; whosoever shall be wanting, he shall not live. But Jehu did it in subtilty, to the intent that he might destroy the worshippers of Baal.  20 And Jehu said, Proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal. And they proclaimed it.  21 And Jehu sent through all Israel: and all the worshippers of Baal came, so that there was not a man left that came not. And they came into the house of Baal; and the house of Baal was full from one end to another.  22 And he said unto him that was over the vestry, Bring forth vestments for all the worshippers of Baal. And he brought them forth vestments.  

23 And Jehu went, and Jehonadab the son of Rechab, into the house of Baal, and said unto the worshippers of Baal, Search, and look that there be here with you none of the servants of the Lord, but the worshippers of Baal only.  24 And when they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings, Jehu appointed fourscore men without, and said, If any of the men whom I have brought into your hands escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of him.  25 And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in, and slay them; let none come forth. And they smote them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal.  26 And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them.  27 And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house of Baal, and made it a draught house unto this day.
28 Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel.  29 Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, Jehu departed not from after them, to wit, the golden calves that were in Bethel, and that were in Dan.
30 And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.  31 But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin.

 JEHU PUNISHED FOR THE KILLINGS AT JEZREEL
Even though God rewarded Jehu for his actions against Ahab's line by promising that his seed would rule Israel for 4 generations (II Kings 10:30), he WAS punished for all the unnecessary bloodshed he carried out (Hosea 1:4-5).  Jehu was never commanded to kill more than Ahab's line.  He was never commanded to kill the priests of Baal.  II Kings 10:29-31 states, Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, Jehu departed not from after them, to wit, the golden calves that were in Beth-el, and that were in Dan.  The reforms had not gone far enough.  The original sin of Jeroboam in building the golden calves as substitutes for the true worship of the Lord had continued and Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart: for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin.  Jehu was anointed king by the Lord.  There was nothing wrong with his take over of the kingdom.  But in the final analysis, he showed the same defect in the character of the previous kings of Israel.  He forgot WHO put him in power and WHO could take that power away just as easily.  God would use the mighty hand of Tiglath-Pileser III to begin to accomplish the end of the house of Jehu and the northern kingdom of Israel.

First Deportation of the Israelites (Click To Enlarge)

When Shalmaneser V took Samaria, he did not destroy it as is often thought.  A recent paper by Robert Chapman in the Biblical Archeological Review 43:5, September/October 2017 states:

This fact is significant for the site as a whole, in that it means that it is actually quite difficult to discern the point at which the kingdom of Israel comes to an end. While Samaria provides a fixed point for the dating of the reign of Omri in the early ninth century B.C.E., it provides no such fixed point for the end of the kingdom of Israel. There is no archaeological evidence that the palace of Omri was destroyed by the Assyrians. 

When the Assyrians took Samaria in 721 without destroying it and decided to create the province of Samaria, they required a suitable residence for their provincial governor. In the palace of Omri and his successors, they found a building of a type with which they were completely familiar—it was even decorated with the same style of Phoenician carved ivory and bone inlay in the furniture and cedar paneling with which they were familiar (as we know from the rich ivory carvings discovered at Nimrud and on a smaller scale at Samaria itself). And what better way to emphasize their legitimacy and dominance than by making their headquarters in the former palace of the deposed kings of Israel?

Ivories from Ahab's Palace

It would appear, from the ivory carvings found on the site of ancient Samaria, that there was little that needed to be changed by an Assyrian or even by the later Babylonians in the palace. The Kings of Israel had adopted the ways of their pagan neighbors.

PALACE INTRIGUE & MURDER IN ISRAEL
In the 30 years since the death of King Jeroboam II to the end of the northern kingdom, was a time of instability. Jeroboam II's son Zechariah was assassinated after only six months in power.  Shallum, his assassin was himself murdered after only one month in the throne.  

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Menahem, who came after him, managed some sort of stability in that he ruled for 10 years.  By the end of his reign, he had become a vassal to Assyria.  According to II Kings 15:9 he paid Pul (Tiglath-Pileser III) 1,000 talents of silver.  This tribute put an enormous strain on the kingdom of Israel, which would eventually play a part in Israel's rebellion against Assyria.

Pekeniah, Menahem's son ruled for two years before he was killed by Pekah who usurped his kingdom.  Pekah unwisely joined an anti-Assyrian coalition led by Rezin king of Damascus.  This revolt brought forth the Syro-Ephramite War.  Rezin and Pekah hoped that King Ahaz of Judah would join them, but to no avail.  He would remain loyal to Assyria.

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Tiglath-Pileser III turned his attention first toward Philistia and the Israelite coastal region.  He wanted control of the ancient shipping points of the spice trade from the East.

Next, Tiglath-Pileser turned his attention to the Rezin the ringleader in this rebellion and attacked Damascus, conquering it in a one year siege.  In 732BC the city was captured and destroyed.  Rezin was executed and his people deported to other parts of the Assyrian empire.  The cruelty of the event was surely not lost on Pekah in Israel.  The Annals of Tiglath-Pileser describe what happened:

[…of] Rezin [the Damascene…]. [I captured] heavy [booty] […]…[(With) the blood of his] war[riors] I dyed a reddish hue the river of […], raging [torrent]; […], his courtiers, charioteers and […], their weapons I smashed; and […] their horses I […]. I captured his warriors, archers, shield- and lance-bearers; and I dispersed their battle array. That one (i.e. Rezin), in order to save his life, fled alone; and he entered the gate of his city [like] a mongoose. I impaled alive his chief ministers; and I made his country behold (them). I set up my camp around the city for 45 days; and I confined him like a bird in a cage. His gardens, […] orchards without number I cut down; I did not leave a single one.

While Damascus was suffering siege, Tiglath-Pileser sent a two-pronged attack toward Israel.  One attack was towards the Transjordan Gilead and the other into Galilee (I Chronicles 5:6, 26; II Kings 15:29).  Tiglath-Pileser's inscription reads, "I carried off [to] Assyria the land of Béµt-Håumria (Beth Omri or Israel), […its] ‘auxiliary [army,’] […] all of its people.  [I/they killed] Pekah, their king, and I installed Hoshea [as king] over them. I received from them 10 talents of gold, x talents of silver…"

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This inscription is in agreement with the account in II Kings 15:29.  At this point, a portion of the Jews was deported, Abel-Beth-Maacah, Yanoah, Kedesh Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee including all the land of Naphtali.

Tiglath-Pileser III carried out a mass deportation. His annals record 13,520 prisoners taken from Galilee (no precise figure is given in II Kings 17:6). In a research paper written by Zvi Gal (an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority. He is also a former director of the Hecht Museum at Haifa University) titled, Israel in Exile, Biblical Archeological Review 24:3, May/June 1998, it is stated:

Nimrud Prism (British Museum)

Based on our demographic analysis of the survey and excavation findings, the population of Lower Galilee in the eighth century B.C.E. prior to the destruction was about 18,000.4 Thus it appears that Tiglath-pileser exiled the bulk of the population. The archaeological evidence—or lack of evidence—signaling a break in occupation indicates that no people were brought in to replace the Israelites. Tiglath-pileser’s policy contrasts with that of his successor, Shalmaneser V, who brought people from the east to settle in Lower Galilee when he conquered the Israelite capital at Samaria in 722 B.C.E., thus ending the northern kingdom.
The tenth- to eighth-century B.C.E. fortified cities of Lower Galilee that were destroyed by the Assyrians, such as Tel Mador and Tel Gath-Hepher, were not reoccupied until the Persian period (mid-sixth to late-fifth century B.C.E.). Moreover, the reoccupation of these sites was different, being rural in nature. The ruined city walls were reused only as terrace walls.
Thus, from the archaeological viewpoint, it is evident that the Assyrian campaigns led by Tiglath-pileser III marked the end of the Iron Age in Lower Galilee. The region remained relatively deserted during the seventh century B.C.E.

In another article by K. Lawson Younger Jr., (Professor of Old Testament, Semitic Languages and Ancient Near Eastern History at Trinity Evengelical Divinity School), titled Israelites In Exile, Biblical Archeological Review 29:6, November/December 2003 it states:

Though the Assyrians typically utilized a bi-directional deportation policy, in this case the archaeological evidence of destruction clearly indicates that Tiglath-pileser’s deportations were uni-directional. He did not settle other peoples in Galilee. Just 30 years later, in 701 B.C.E., the Assyrian king Sennacherib implemented another uni-directional deportation of thousands of Judahites.

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Although Shalmaneser V conquered Samaria in 722 BC, he only lived a couple of months after the conquest.  After an internal struggle, Sargon II came to the Assyrian throne and faced a new rebellion begun by Yau-bi'di of Hamath which included Samaria.  Yau-b'di of Hamath had been the royal governor appointed by the Assyrians.  In 720BC he revolted and declared himself King of Hamath, a short-lived title.

In 713 BC the Philistine city of Ashdod rebelled against the Assyrians.  Sargon II's commanding officer Tartan was sent to quell the revolt.  The result can be grasped from an inscription found in room 14 of palace of Sargon in Nimrud:

Iamani[1] from Ashdod, afraid of my armed force left his wife and children and fled to the frontier of Musru which belongs to Meluhha (Ethiopia) and hid there like a thief. I installed an officer of mine as governor over his entire large country and its prosperous inhabitants, (thus) aggrandizing (again) territory belonging to Ashur, the king of the gods. The terror inspiring glamor of the Ashur, my lord, overpowered the king of Meluhha and he threw him (i.e. Iamani) in fetters on hands and feet, and sent him to me, at Assyria. I conquered and sacked the towns Shinuhtu (and) Samaria, and all Israel (Omri-Land Bit Hu-um-ri-ia). I caught, like a fish, the Greek (Ionians) who live on islands amidst the Western Sea.

Now Sargon turned his attention to Samaria and the King Hoshea, who had been set in power by Tiglath-Pileser III and had, apparently, tired of paying the annual tribute.

At the beginning of my royal rule, I…the town of the Samarians I besieged, conquered (2 Lines destroyed) [for the god…] who let me achieve this my triumph… I led away as prisoners [27,290 inhabitants of it (and) equipped from among them (soldiers to man)] 50 chariots for my royal corps…. The town I rebuilt better than it was before and settled therein people from countries which I had conquered. I placed an officer of mine as governor over them and imposed upon them tribute as is customary for Assyrian citizens. (Nimrud Prism IV 25-41)

This account is paralleled by II Kings 17:3-6 which states,

Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents.  4 And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea: for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: therefore the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison.  5 Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.
6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.  7 For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods.

King Hoshea had put his faith in one of the two superpowers of his time.  He had forsaken the Lord.  He thus became mere political ruler and not a servant of the Lord.  He suffered the fate of a mere political leader of the time.  In fact, the Bible does not even consider important enough to mention his final fate.  But, if the practices of other Assyrian kings is to serve as a model, his fate could not have been good. Some believe that he was blinded before he was imprisoned since this was a common practice of Assyrian conquerors.

When political leaders begin to trust in men instead of realizing that all battles belong to the Lord, they risk this ending to their rule, unless God has other plans for them and their nation.