2. But not as the kings of Israel.

For, whereas the kings of Israel had hitherto maintained guards upon their frontiers, to hinder their subjects from going up to worship at Jerusalem, Hoshea gave them all free liberty to worship there, and probably encouraged them in demolishing the high places (2 Chron. 30, 31). On this account he has, as to religion, the best character given him in Scripture of all that reigned before him over Israel after the division of the kingdom; for, although he was by no means perfect in the true worship of God, yet his ways were less offensive than the ways of any who had preceded him in that kingdom. Prideaux.—Hoshea’s general attitude toward Jehovah was much the same as that of former kings of Israel. He maintained the calf worship, leaned upon “arms of flesh,” and turned a deaf ear to the teaching of the prophets—e.g., Hosea and Micah, who addressed their warnings to him. But he was not guilty of any special wickedness—he set up no new idolatry; he seems to have allowed his subjects, if they pleased, to attend the festival worship at Jerusalem.

4. He had sent messengers to So. king of Egypt.** We learn from the prophet Hosea that the expediency of calling in Egypt as a counterpoise to Assyria had long been in the thoughts of those who directed the policy of the Israelite State (see Hos. 7:11; 12:1, etc.). Now at last the plunge was taken. An Ethiopian dynasty of some strength and vigor had possession of Egypt, and held its court during some part of the year at Memphis (Hos. 9:6). The king who occupied the throne was called Shabak. Hammond.

The Ethiopian king Shabaka, or Sabako, is the So of the Old Testament, whom Hoshea had bribed to help him against the Assyrian monarch. But before that help could be sent the Assyrian had descended on his rebellious vassal, whom he dethroned and imprisoned. Now, as ever, the Egyptian had proved to be a “bruised reed” to those who trusted in him. Sabako, in fact, was too much engaged in consolidating his power in Egypt to think of foreign conquests. Sayce.

5. Went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.** From some time in Hoshea’s seventh year to some time in his ninth. According to the Hebrew mode of reckoning, parts of years are counted as years; and thus the siege need not have lasted much over a year, though it may have been extended to nearly three years. In either case, there was ample time for Shabak to have brought up his forces, had he been so minded; and his failure to do so, or in any way to succor his ally, showed how little reliance was to be placed on Egyptian promises (cf. chap. 18:21). Hammond.—From the fourth to the sixth of Hezekiah, and from the seventh to the ninth of Hoshea (2 K. 18:9, 10); two years, therefore, according to our reckoning, but three, according to the inclusive reckoning of the Hebrews. This was a long time for so small a place to resist the Assyrians; but Samaria was favorably situated on a steep isolated hill, and was no doubt defended with desperation. B. C.

Hoshea’s revolt from Shalmaneser seems to have been no less an act of patriotism than Hezekiah’s, though not prompted by such purely religious motives. Hoshea was, in fact, the best king in the whole line from Jeroboam. Nor ought we to be surprised that the final catastrophe came in his reign. Speaking humanly, the State was past redemption; the utter corruption and impenitence of the people are attested by the denunciations of Hosea, and confirmed by their scornful rejection of Hezekiah’s call to repentance and union. Even the king was only some shades better than his predecessors, and it was no partial reform that could save and renew the State. Viewing the case from the higher ground taken throughout the Scripture history—the inseparable connection between national prosperity or adversity and religious obedience or rebellion—we cannot say that it was too late for Israel to be saved; as Nineveh was, when her people repented at the preaching of Jonah. They had only forty days of grace; Hoshea and his people had three years; let us now see how they used them. In the third year of Hoshea (B.C. 726) Shalmaneser, who had succeeded Tiglath-pileser, in B.C. 730 marched against Hoshea to enforce payment of the tribute, the refusal of which, in the very year of Hezekiah’s accession, is perhaps another proof of a common feeling. Hoshea submitted and became tributary to Assyria. His second revolt is morally justified by patriotism; and even politically, the favorite test of success might not have been wanting, as we see in the case of Hezekiah. But, in the religious point of view, it was an utter wrong and failure. Had Hoshea made common cause with Hezekiah, and thrown himself on the protection of Jehovah, we have a right to believe that the times of David might have returned. But Hoshea took the very course denounced by the law of Moses—reliance upon Egypt. The long contest had begun between the sovereigns of Egypt and Western Asia for the frontier province of Palestine, and both had their partisans at the court of Samaria. The king of Egypt, who is called So in the Scripture narrative, was either Shebek I., the Sabaco of Herodotus, or his son Shebek II., the Sevechus of Manetho. He belonged to the warlike twenty-fifth (Ethiopian) dynasty, who opposed the progress of Assyria with all their force. Hoshea formed a secret league with him, and withheld the accustomed tribute from Shalmaneser; who, informed of the conspiracy, seized the king of Israel and shut him up in prison, where he was bound with fetters and treated with cruel indignity. His sudden destruction is compared by the prophet Hosea to the disappearance of the foam upon the water. The imprisonment of Hoshea clearly preceded the siege of Samaria: it may be that he was seized on a visit to Nineveh for the purpose of excusing his conduct. Shalmaneser then marched against Israel; and after overrunning the country, laid siege to Samaria in the seventh year of Hoshea, the fourth of Hezekiah (B.C. 723). Then followed one of those memorable defences, the despairing efforts of dying nations. We have no details of the siege; but Isaiah gives a glowing description of the mighty instrument of Jehovah smiting like a hailstorm the glorious beauty of the city, which towered on its hill like a crown of pride, the head of the fat valleys of the drunkards of Ephraim. Its strong position enabled the city to hold out for three years, during which we learn from the Assyrian monuments that Shalmaneser died and was succeeded by his son Sargon, a change not noticed in the Scripture narrative, which, after the first mention of Shalmaneser, only speaks of the “king of Assyria.” The city was taken in the ninth year of Hoshea, the sixth of Hezekiah. Sargon himself records the capture of Samaria in the following terms; “Samaria I looked at,

I captured; 27,280 men who dwelt in it I carried away.” According to the Scripture narrative, he “carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan and the cities of the Medes.” This deportation of the people extended to Samaria and its dependent towns, a region small in comparison to the original kingdom of the ten tribes. The region east of Jordan had already been so treated by Tiglath-pileser, who had also carried away the northern tribes, but not to the same extent; for a remnant were left, who form the nucleus of the mixed population of the later Galilee. The cities in the south of Ephraim, which had been attached to Judah by conquest, or by the bond of religion under Hezekiah, probably shared the fortunes of the southern kingdom. P. S.

The predictions of Amos and Hosea assigning the causes of the captivity of Israel convey in substance the great and comprehensive truths respecting God’s dealing with man. As He deals with His own chosen people, so will He deal with men. The history of Israel is a history and illustration of the spirit and principles and methods of God’s government on the earth. What God is, and what God will do in every juncture of human interests and affairs, and in connection with every form of human conduct, is here exemplified by actual events. And what man is, and what man will do in the face of multiplied marvels of God’s bounty and grace and patience, is here amply disclosed in the deeds of successive generations. And to convey this knowledge to all the after generations, to impress upon us these supreme lessons for our use and eternal profit, is the one design of this Inspired Record! B.

SAMARIA FINALLY TAKEN AND ISRAEL CARRIED TO ASSYRIA. REASONS ASSIGNED FOR THEIR CAPTIVITY. SAMARIA REPEOPLED BY ASSYRIAN COLONISTS. THEIR MIXED RELIGION.

17:6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away unto Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

18:9 And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it. And at the end of three years they took it: even in the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken. And the king of Assyria carried Israel away unto Assyria, and put them in Halah, and in Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes: because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed his covenant, even all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded, and would not hear it, nor do it.

17:7 And it was so, because the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, which brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the nations, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they made. And the children of Israel did secretly things that were not right against the LORD their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. And they set them up pillars and Asherim upon every high hill, and under every green tree: and there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the nations whom the LORD carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger: and they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing. Yet the LORD testified unto Israel, and unto Judah, by the hand of every prophet, and of every seer, saying, Turn ye 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 the hand of my servants the prophets. Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their neck, like to the neck of their fathers, who believed not in the LORD their God. And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified unto them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the nations that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them that they should not do like them. And they forsook all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger. Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only. Also Judah kept not the commandments of the LORD their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. And the LORD rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight. For he rent Israel from the house of David; and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king: and Jeroboam drave Israel from following the LORD, and made them sin a great sin. And the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them; until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he spake by the hand of all his servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away out of their own land to Assyria, unto this day.

And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof. And so it was, at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the LORD: therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which killed some of them. Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast carried away, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land. Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land. So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught them how they should fear the LORD. Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. So they feared the LORD, and made unto them from among themselves priests of the high places, 33 which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been 34 carried away. Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law or after the commandment which the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel; 35 with whom the LORD had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear 36 other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them: But the LORD, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and unto him shall ye bow yourselves, and to him shall ye sacrifice: 37 and the statutes and the ordinances, and the law and the commandment, which he wrote 38 for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore; and ye shall not fear other gods: and the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye fear other gods: 39 but the LORD your God shall ye fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your 40, 41 enemies. Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the LORD, and served their graven images; their children likewise, and their children’s children, as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.

2 Kings 17 : 6 ; 18 : 9-11.

THIS occurred in the ninth year of Hoshea, the nineteenth and last king of Israel in a period of two hundred and fifty-four years. The division of Solomon’s kingdom occurred 975 B.C. The final captivity of Israel took place 721 B.C. (or, 718). The other kingdom (of Judah) lasted one hundred and thirty-five years longer, until 586 B.C. Then Judah was carried into the same region of country by the Babylonian power, which meanwhile had succeeded to the Assyrian. Probably upon the restoration of the Judahites, or Jews, after seventy years of captivity, a proportionate number of the northern kingdom (of the Ten Tribes) returned and became incorporated with their brethren of Judah. Now, however, Sargon transported the most energetic and useful among the people of Israel into his own domain, that he might be the gainer by their skill and toil, and save the trouble and expense of conquering them again. With settlers from Assyria he replaced the removed Israelites from Samaria. This policy was repeated by Esarhaddon, who substituted other Assyrians for the remnant of efficient Israelites. These Eastern strangers gradually affiliated with the remaining Israelites, and the population thus resulting took the name of Samaritans, from the rebuilt city of Samaria. B.

Hoshea, who obtained the throne by conspiring against and slaying Pekah, and who, according to 2 K. 17 : 2, was comparatively a better king, became tributary to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, but sought, by concluding an alliance with So, king of Egypt (the Sabakön of Herodotus), to release himself from this dependence. Shalmaneser, who was then occupied in Hither Asia, immediately marched into the land of Israel. Hoshea, after being, as it seems, summoned to the Assyrian camp to account for his conduct, was imprisoned, and Samaria attacked. But an heroic resistance must have been made in this as in all the deadly struggles of the Israelites; for it was not till after a three years’ siege that it was taken, and “the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim trodden under foot” (Isa. 28 : 3), not, as is now settled by the cuneiform inscriptions, by Shalmaneser, but by his successor, Sargon, mentioned in Isa. 20 : 1. The people were led into captivity 720 B.C., and thus was the judgment accomplished. The dwelling-places assigned to the exiles were situated in Media and the upper provinces of Assyria (verse 6). It has been already remarked that the continued existence of the Ten Tribes during the subsequent centuries is attested by 1 Chron. 5 : 26, “unto this day,” and Josephus (Ant. xi. 5, 2); their restoration is also expressly foretold by the prophets. Oehler.

The recently exhumed monuments of Assyria illustrate in a remarkable manner the minute accuracy of the sacred narrative. It has just been stated (verse 5) that Shalmaneser (the fourth of that name), king of Assyria, came up against Hoshea. But though Shalmaneser commenced the siege of Samaria, he did not complete his work. That was done by his usurping successor, Sargon. The siege began in the fourth year of Shalmaneser’s reign, and lasted till his sixth, which was his last; for in that year the usurper Sargon seized the throne, and continued his predecessor’s campaigns against Samaria and Tyre. In his inscriptions, he claims the conquest of Samaria as an event in the first year of his reign. We may note the careful accuracy of the writer of Kings, who says (18 : 10) Shalmaneser besieged Samaria, and that at the end of three years they took it. Sargon further tells us, in his cylinder, that he deprived Samaria of its partial independence, and appointed an Assyrian governor over it, further punishing it by carrying off 27,280 of the inhabitants, and imposing on the impoverished remainder the same tax to which the city had been liable before its revolt. Sargon also states that, six years afterward, “he subdued the uncultivated plains of South Arabia, which had never before given tribute to Assyria,” and carried captive some of the Thermodites (a well-known Arab tribe), and settled them in Samaria. Hence came Geshem and the Arabians whom Nehemiah mentions among the Samaritan opponents of the rebuilding of the temple. The Sacred History tells us that the Assyrian king placed the captives in Halah, and in Habor by the river of Gozan (or, rather, “on the Habor, the river of Gozan”), and in the cities of the Medes. Halah (or Chālach, as it would be pronounced) has been identified by Layard with a remarkable mound marking an ancient city, and called Gla, in the great plains of the Khabour (= Habor), a western affluent of the Euphrates, often mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions, which waters the wide district of Gozan, the Gauzanitis of the Greeks. The cities of the Medes (or, as the Septuagint reads, the mountains of the Medes) refer to the wild highland region, east of the Tigris, north of the Persian Gulf. This region the records of Sargon tell us he overran, and annexed it to Assyria; and “changed the abodes” of his subjects, planting conquered Ashdod in the extreme west of his new empire with captives from Media. Thus he made room for the Israelites, whom he transplanted to the extreme east of his newest conquest. We may note also that he tells us that in his second year he took Hamath, the capital of the Hittites in northern Syria; and after separating from the spoil two hundred chariots and six hundred horsemen as his royal portion, he transported the remainder of the inhabitants to other regions; and his captives from the east, “in the midst of Hamath I settled them,” while the Book of Kings tells us that Samaria was resettled by men, among others, from Hamath. Tristram.

The comparatively small number of Israelites who were carried into captivity shows that Sargon contented himself with removing only those persons and their families who had taken part in the revolt against him; in fact, Samaria was treated pretty much as Jerusalem was by Nebuchadnezzar in the time of Jehoiachin. The greater part of the old population was allowed to remain in its native land. This fact disposes of the modern theories which assume that the whole of the Ten Tribes were carried away. Sayce.

The seed of Jacob, whose history we have heretofore followed in the land of Canaan, were now dispersed in four or five different countries. Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Egypt, and Palestine contained each a section of the chosen people. The prophecy of Moses, uttered eight or nine hundred years before, received its first, but not its only fulfilment; on account of their sins and provocations, the chosen people, whom God loved so well, were scattered among the heathen. Though a few of the captive Israelites remained in Nineveh, the greater part were placed in the province of Media. Media lay to the east of Assyria. Its aspect was wild and mountainous; thus forming a great contrast to the flat plains of Assyria and Mesopotamia. Its northern boundary was formed by the great chain of mountains that spread out on either side from Ararat, and that sometimes rise to heights that are almost lost to view in the skies. It is a singular fact that the Israelites were thus brought back to the neighborhood of the first settlements of the human race. Some of them would drink from rivers cooled by the snows of Ararat. W. G. B.

Thus ended the kingdom of Israel, after a duration of just two hundred and fifty-five years, under nineteen kings and seven dynasties, not reckoning among the latter the ephemeral usurpations of Zimri and Shallum. The last two of these dynasties perished with their founders, Pekah and Hoshea: three, those of Jeroboam, Baasha, and Menahem, had two kings each; the house of Omri numbered four kings in three generations; Jehu’s, the longest of all, reigned for five generations from father to son, and all its kings died a natural death except the last, Zechariah. Of the other kings, only Jeroboam I., Baasha, Omri, Ahaziah, and Menahem had the same lot; the rest were slain by traitors or in battle, or died in captivity. Their character was even worse than their fate. Not one in the whole list is commended either for morality or piety; all were idolaters, and traitors to Jehovah. Even the zeal of Jehu ended in idol worship, and the patriotism of Hoshea was marred by disloyalty to God. The sacred historian concludes their history with an impressive and affecting summary of their sins, in which they were followed by Judah, provoking the anger of Jehovah till “He removed them out of His sight.” First, “there was none left but the tribe of Judah only;” but their sins had already caused Jehovah to “rend Israel from the house of David;” and at last “Jehovah rejected all the seed of Israel.” But not till He had given them abundant invitations to return to God by the long line of prophets, the preachers of repentance and reformation. Besides the many whose names are too often forgotten because their writings are not extant, Elijah and Elisha shine amid the darkest night of Israel’s idolatry; Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, seals his testimony against the apostasy of Judah with his martyrdom; and the century before the fall of Samaria is glorified by the names of Jonah, Amos, and Hosea in Israel, and Joel, Isaiah, and Micah in Judah. P. S.

EXTINCTION OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, CAUSED SOLELY BY THE NATION’S WILFUL REJECTION OF GOD’S COVENANT MERCY, AND OPEN, FLAGRANT, AND PROLONGED DISOBEDIENCE TO HIS COMMANDS.

Verses 7-23.

Here the writer ceases to be the mere historian, and becomes the religious teacher and prophet, drawing out the lessons of history and justifying the ways of God to man. As Bähr says, he “does not carry on the narrative as taken from the original authorities, but himself here begins a review of the history and fate of Israel, which ends with verse 23, and forms an independent section by itself.” The section divides itself into four portions: (1) From verse 7 to verse 12, a general statement of Israel’s wickedness; (2) from verse 13 to verse 15, a special aggravation of their guilt—viz., their rejection of prophets; (3) verses 16 and 17 contain a specification of their chief acts of sin; and (4) from verse 18 to verse 23, a general summary, including some words of warning to Judah. Hammond.—The Bible does not simply relate, but draws aside the veil and shows us the innermost springs of God’s providence, and how they work. It teaches us to understand the deepest causes of the rise and fall of nations. The causes it insists on are not economical, or political, or intellectual, but religious, and its lessons are for all time. We may say of this survey of Israel’s history—these things “are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:11). J. O.

The brevity of the account of the fall of

Samaria contrasts with the long enumeration of the sins which caused it. Modern critics assume that verses 7-23 are “an interpolation by the Deuteronomic writer,” apparently for no reason but because they trace Israel’s fall to its cause in idolatry. But surely the bare notice in verse 6, immediately followed by verse 24, cannot have been all that the original historian had to say about so tragic an end of so large a part of the people of God. The whole purpose of the Old Testament history is not to chronicle events, but to declare God’s dealings, and the fall of a kingdom was of little moment, except as revealing the righteousness of God. These verses, closely looked at, disclose a very striking progress of thought. In the centre stands verse 13, telling of the mission of the prophets. Before it, verses 7-12 narrate Israel’s sin, which culminates in provoking the Lord to anger (verse 11). After it, the sins are reiterated with noticeable increase of emphasis, and again culminate in provoking the Lord to anger (verse 17). So we have two degrees of guilt—one before and one after the prophet’s messages; and two kindlings of God’s anger—one which led to the sending of the prophets, and one which led to the destruction of Israel. A. M.

Scarcely on any other occasion does the sacred writer allow himself reflections of this kind. But they are appropriate, and almost needful, at the close of a history which relates events in their bearing on the kingdom of God, and views Israel as a nation called to be the servants and the messengers of the Lord. They explain the inner meaning of God’s dealings in the past, and the deeper causes of a rejection and an exile which cannot end till Israel and Judah, no longer hostile nor separate, shall in one common repentance turn to seek Jehovah their God and the Son of David their King. A. E.

7-17. God’s judgment upon Israel vindicated. The lessons of the history rehearsed in summary. In the same plain, dispassionate style which marks all the inspired writers, this one, at a time and place most appropriate and called for, records what God had done for Israel, what He asked of Israel, and how Israel had treated His favors and requests. He had, first of all, delivered them from the galling and debasing servitude of Egypt and the Pharaohs. He had assigned to their possession the finest territory of the East. From this, their land, He had cast out heathen nations. Singling out the people from all others, He had exercised a peculiar personal rule and care over them. Entering into a special personal covenant, he had given specific principles and detailed rules by which they might easily secure all the blessings and promises of His covenant. Thus it would seem that God had done everything he could to attract their confidence, to win their affection, and secure their grateful obedience.

But “so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God.” They worshipped other gods, which He had expressly forbidden. They carried out the idolatrous customs and practices ordained by heathen nations, in place of the prescribed ceremonials of His worship. They preferred to obey the decrees of kings “which they had made,” rather than the rightful commands of the supreme Jehovah. They overlaid the worship and the commands of God with pretences and perversions (verse 9), impiously attempting to mix the false and specious with the true and Divine, and so obscuring the nature and the words, the ways and works of God. “They built high places” or idolatrous shrines (verse 10) in every hamlet, town, and city. They set up idols in every hill, and established their abominable worship in every grove. Like the heathen nations, whom they knew that God had condemned and punished for this very thing, they burned incense and wrought exceeding wickedness. In all this they knowingly provoked God to anger, for He had said, “Ye shall not do this thing.”

But even this was not all. When, under Jeroboam and Ahab, they had thus trampled on God’s covenant and authority by shameless and defiant service of idols, God had still forborne with them. To the laws and counsels long before given through Moses and Samuel, He adds the direct and special testimony of Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, and other prophets and seers. The burden of this testimony, clearly authenticated by miracles, was simply a reminder His statutes and an entreaty to keep them. Yet they neither heard nor heeded. They would not hear. Like stubborn oxen, though themselves reasoning creatures with a conscience, they made their necks stiff, and would not submit to the easy yoke of Divine love. Openly they rejected His statutes, wilfully they repelled His covenant, defiantly they scorned His warnings and entreaties. They became assimilated to the idols they worshipped. As these were vanity or nothingness, so they lost all force of character, all power to know and do that which was right and advantageous. In this senseless impotence of soul, the indictment declares in summing up the various forms of idolatry, they made and bowed down before molten calves, they established secret orgies in the groves, they worshipped the sun, moon, stars, and the planets, and they served Baal. It further particularizes their burning of children in sacrifice to the fire god, and (from the connection here and elsewhere with Moloch) their horrid use of these human victims as means of divination, or methods of foretelling future events. By these impious and inhuman practices, long wilfully maintained, they “sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.” B.

7. The first characteristic of Israel’s sin was ungrateful departure from God. There is a world of pathos and meaning in that “their God,” which is enhanced by the allusion to the Egyptian deliverance. All sins are attempts to break the chain that binds us to God—a chain woven of a thousand linked benefits. All practically deny His possession of us, and ours of Him, and display the short memory which ingratitude has. All have that other feature hinted at here—the contrast, so absurd if it were not so sad, between the worth and power of the God who is left and the other gods who are preferred. The essential meanness and folly of Israel is repeated by every heart departing from the living God.

9. Here the charge is of covering idolatry with a cloak of Jehovah worship. A varnish of religion is convenient and cheap, and often effectual in deceiving ourselves as well as others; but “as he thinketh in his heart, so is he,” whatever his cloak may be; and the thing which we count most precious and long most for is our God, whatever our professions of orthodox religion.

10-12. The idolatry is then described, in rapid touches, as universal. Wherever there was a solitary watchman’s tower among the pastures was a high place, and they were reared in every city. Images and Asherim deformed every hill-top and stood under every spreading tree. Everywhere incense loaded the heavy air with its foul fragrance. The old scenes of unnamable abomination, which had been so terribly avenged, seemed to have come back, and to cry aloud for another purging by fire and sword. The terrible upshot of all was “to provoke the Lord to anger.” The New Testament is as emphatic as the Old in asserting that there is the capacity of anger in the God whose name is love, and that sin calls it forth. The special characteristic of sin, by which it thus attracts that lightning, is that it is disobedience. As in the first sin, so in all others, God has said,

“Ye shall not do this thing;” and we say, “Do it we will.” What can the end of that be but the anger of the Lord? “Because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” A. M.

13. God had never left Himself without living witness. Besides the written testimony of the law, He had sent them a continuous series of prophets, who “repeated and enforced the teaching of the law by word of mouth, breathing into the old words a new life, applying them to the facts of their own times, urging them on the consciences of their hearers, and authoritatively declaring to them that the terrible threatenings of the law were directed against the very sins which they habitually practised.” The sin of Israel would not perhaps have been quite “without remedy” had they not for so long a time turned a deaf ear to the warnings and exhortations of the prophets, and persisting in their disobedience, their wickedness, their greed, their cruelty, their besotted idolatry, despite the scathing denunciations, the tender pleadings, the wise counsels, almost uninterruptedly addressed to them. “Stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears” (Acts 7: 51), they “resisted the Holy Ghost;” and their doom had to be pronounced. Hammond.

14,15. The heavier sin followed the Divine pleading. That Divine voice leaves no man as it finds him. If it does not sway him to obedience, it deepens his guilt, and makes him more obstinate. Like some perverse ox in the yoke, he stiffens his neck, and stands the very picture of brute obduracy. There is an awful alternative involved in our hearing of God’s message, which never returns to Him void, but ever does something to the hearer, either softening or hardening, either scaling the eyes or adding another film on them, either being the savor of life unto life or of death unto death. The missions of the prophets changed forgetfulness of God’s “statutes” into “rejection” of them, and made idolatry self-conscious rebellion. Alas! that men should make what is meant to be a bond to unite them to God into a wedge to part them further from him. But how constantly that is the effect of the Gospel, and for the same reason as in Israel, that they “did not believe in the Lord their God.” A. M.

18. There was none left but the tribe of Judah only.** The “tribe of Judah” stands for the kingdom of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, into which the greater part of Dan and Simeon had also been absorbed. This became now exclusively God’s “peculiar people,” the object of His love and of His care.

19. Also Judah kept not the commandments of the Lord their God.** The sharp contrast which the writer has drawn between Israel and Judah in verse 18 reminds him that the difference was only for a time. Judah followed in Israel’s sins, and ultimately shared in her punishment. This verse and the next are parenthetic.

20. And the Lord rejected all the seed of Israel.** God is no respecter of persons. As He had rejected the Ten Tribes on account of certain transgressions, which have been enumerated (verses 8-17), so, when Judah committed the self-same sins, and transgressed equally, Judah had equally to be rejected. “All the seed of Israel” is the entire nation—Israel in the widest sense, made up of Judah and of Israel in the narrow sense. And afflicted them—by the hands of Sargon, and Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon (2 Chron. 33: 11), and Pharaoh-Nechoh, and others.

21. For he rent; rather, for he had rent.** The nexus of the verse is with verse 18. The difference between the fates of Israel and Judah—the survival of Judah for a hundred and thirty-four years—is traced back to the separation under Rehoboam, and to the wicked policy which Jeroboam then pursued, and left as a legacy to his successors. Hammond.—Jeroboam drave Israel from following the Lord. The strong expression “drave Israel” is an allusion to the violent measures where Jeroboam had recourse in order to stop the efflux into Judea of the more religious portion of his subjects (2 Chron. 11: 13-16), the calling in of Shishak, and the permanent assumption of a hostile attitude toward the southern kingdom. B. C.

23. In judgment against their determined wickedness God returns them to bondage, from which He had originally rescued them. Patiently He had endured their ingratitude and evil ways for many hundred years. Every possible means he had employed with the Ten Tribes during their separate existence as a nation. But their kings were all idolatrous and wicked rulers. And the mass of the people gave themselves up to impiety and the most flagrant immoralities. “Therefore the Lord removed Israel out of His sight,” out of the land which He had hallowed by His special indwelling, out of the land where He had established His covenant and worship, where He had revealed His word by prophets and teachers. As a distinct people, they were dispersed among heathen nations.

Not only the entire history of the Israelites from the Exodus, but emphatically the history of the separate kingdom of Israel, is full of vital instruction. Nowhere else stands so sharply revealed the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the natural heart of man. Nowhere else do we derive so deep an impression of the strength and tenacity of God’s love to sinners. Yet, while plainly revealing the fact that judgment is God’s “strange work,” it as plainly shows that His long-suffering and forbearance can be overcome by the sinner’s determination in disobedience and evil-doing. It proves that even the patience of God has a limit and an end. Though sentence against the evil-worker be long delayed, it will at last be surely executed. His threatenings, like His promises, never fail of accomplishment. He will destroy the wilfully impenitent soul in his sins. B.

Let it be remembered this doom of national destruction had been predicted long before, even by Moses (Lev. 26 and De. 28), and this prediction the Lord through His prophets missed no good opportunity to reaffirm. Note also that whereas, under the national policy of Jeroboam, they had in the outset severed themselves from the Mosaic institutions, especially the temple worship and the national festivals—a step which seemed to Jeroboam a necessity of their separate national existence—the Lord graciously sought to supply this lack by a specially vigorous development of religious agency through the prophets. It was sustained remarkably by miracle, as we have seen particularly in the case of Elijah and Elisha; also by wonderful interpositions of God by means of drought and famine; also by various national events—wars, deliverances. To all this we must add the labors of those prophets who wrote their messages and scattered them among the people. Of these, we have among the northern tribes Hosea and Amos certainly; and Micah seems to have some reference to this kingdom. It was only after all these efforts had proved unavailing that the Lord at length gave them up—Hosea indicates in more passages than one with what wonderful tenderness of emotion and after what touching admonitions and warnings. It was through his lips and pen that the Lord said, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within Me; My repentings are kindled together” (Hos. 11: 8).

The fall of the northern kingdom was purposely made admonitory to the southern. It could not be otherwise than a solemn warning to Judah. We cannot say definitely how powerful the influence of this final fall and captivity of Samaria was upon the people of Judah in promoting the great reform wrought by Hezekiah. This reform he commenced in his first year, six years before the final conquest; but continued it with efforts more or less vigorous throughout his reign of twenty-nine years. Consequently, under the “logic of events” the great fact was bearing upon his people of God’s exterminating judgments upon that apostate nation. It was of yet more value to them because its date (after this great reform commenced) gave them the opportunity to invite their brethren of the north to come in and join them in this general turning to the Lord. In our study of that reform we shall see how intimately they must have become acquainted with the religious state of the northern kingdom; how clearly they must have seen and felt their fearful apostasy from God, and the incorrigible hardness of the masses; and how powerfully this must have augmented the moral effect of that terrific judgment, which, almost before this great reform had culminated, became a fearful fact before their eyes. After the fall of the northern kingdom prophets became more conspicuous in Judah. Released from service in the north, they concentrated their labors upon the only remaining kingdom, uniting in one grand effort to save Judah from the same threatening doom. We meet no further notice of the prophet-colleges at Bethel, Gilgal, and Jericho. They may or they may not have continued in operation. Those localities were not remote from Jerusalem, but no historic allusions to their work or even to their existence have come down to us. H. C.

Verses 24-41.

The writer, before dismissing the subject of the Israelite kingdom, proceeds to inform us of certain results of the conquest. Having removed the bulk of the native inhabitants, the Assyrians did not allow the country to lie waste, but proceeded to replace the population which they had carried off by settlers from other localities (verse 24). These settlers were, after a short time, incommoded by lions, which increased upon them and diminished their numbers (verse 25). The idea arose that the visitation was supernatural, and might be traced to the fact that the new-comers, not knowing “the manner of the God of the land,” displeased Him by the neglect of His rites or by the introduction of alien worship (verse 26). A remedy for this was sought in the sending to them from Assyria one of the priests who had been carried off, from whom it was thought they might learn how “the God of the land” was to be propitiated. This was the origin of the “mixed religion” which grew up in the country. While the nations who had replaced the Israelites brought in their own superstitions, and severally worshipped their own gods (verses 30, 31), there was a general acknowledgment of Jehovah by all of them, and a continuance of Jehovistic worship in the various high places. The nations both “feared the Lord, and served their graven images,” down to the time when the writer of Kings composed his work (verses 33-41).

24. And placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel. Transplantation of nations, commenced by Tiglath-pileser, was practised on a still larger scale by Sargon.

25. And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord. They were ignorant, that is, of Jehovah, and paid Him no religious regard. They brought with them their own forms of heathenism (see verses 30, 31). Hammond.

28. Taught them how they should fear the Lord. It must not be supposed that the priest sent to the colonists was a true Jehovah-priest, who instructed them in the pure worship of God. The whole context makes it clear that He was one of those who had been attached to the calf worship at one of the two national shrines—probably at Bethel. Hence, He would be willing to wink at the mixed religion, which a true Jehovah-priest would have unsparingly condemned. B. C.—The priest selected by Sargon’s advisers was a Bethelite priest, and, returning thither, took up the worship familiar to him. This worship could only be that of the calf-priests instituted by Jeroboam, which was, however, most certainly a worship of Jehovah, and an imitation or travesty of the temple worship at Jerusalem.

32. So they feared the Lord—rather, and they (also) honored Jehovah—i.e., with their idolatrous worship they combined also the worship of Jehovah (cf. verse 28)—and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places—i.e., followed the example of Jeroboam in taking for priests persons of all ranks, even the lowest.

33. They feared the Lord, and served their own gods. This syncretism, this mixed religion, is so surprising to the writer, and so abhorrent to his religious sentiments, that he cannot but dwell upon it, not shrinking from repeating himself (see verses 32, 33, 41), in order to arrest the reader’s attention, and point out to him the folly and absurdity of such conduct. The practice was still going on in his own day (verses 34, 41), and may have had attractions for the descendants of the small Israelite population which had been left in the land. The new immigrants “feared Jehovah” in a certain sense—i.e., externally. They admitted Him into their pantheon, and had ritual observances in His honor. But they did not really fear Him in their hearts. Had they done so, they would have inquired what were His laws, statutes, and ordinances, and would have set themselves to obey them. This they did not think of doing.

40. Howbeit they did not hearken. The mixed race, with their mixed religion, though professing to be worshippers of Jehovah, paid no attention to the warnings and threatenings of the law (verse 34), which were to them a dead letter. But they did after their former manner—i.e., they continued to maintain the syncretism described in verses 28-33.

41. So these nations—i.e., the Babylonians, Cuthæans, Hamathites, Avites, and Sepharivites settled in Samaria—feared the Lord, and served their graven images. Hammond.

We have, in the New Testament, a very distinct picture of the relations existing between the Jews and the Samaritans in the time of Jesus. How did these relations originate? In other words, how did the Samaritans come to be the people they were? Two elements enter into the answer of this question, one or the other of which is apt to be neglected, in the answers that are commonly given. First, Sargon and the Assyrian kings who followed him largely repeopled the regions around Samaria with inhabitants who were not Israelite in race or religion, but who superstitiously adopted something of the worship of Jehovah, as the local god of the region, in addition to the religion they brought with them from their former seats (2 K. 17, etc.). They had a centre of worship for Jehovah in Bethel (17:28). When the Jews returned from the exile under Zerubbabel and Jeshua, being in high favor with the Persian king, these Samaritan worshippers of Jehovah were disposed to make common cause with them, and be regarded as of the same religion. When the Jews refused their overtures they became hostile. This state of things seems to have been kept up through the century and more that intervened between the first year of Cyrus and the close of the twelve years of the first administration of Nehemiah. But there was a second element, without which these people would never have become the Samaritans of the New Testament. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah disclose the existence of sharp differences of opinion and practice among the Jews who returned to Jerusalem from the Exile, and their descendants. On the one hand, large numbers were disposed to intermarry and affiliate with their Samaritan, Moabite and Ammonite neighbors; and, on the other hand, Ezra and Nehemiah and those who held with them were determined to break up these practices, and to preserve Israel separate from the other peoples. Among their opponents were men of high rank, including priests and Levites; even Eliashib, the high-priest, was implicated. The last verses of Nehemiah indicate that this contest reached its crisis while Nehemiah was yet governor. One of the grandsons or great-grandsons of Eliashib married a girl of the family of Sanballat, and Nehemiah banished him. The Bible does not tell us what became of him, but we find reason for holding that he became high-priest at Mount Gerizim, and that, with his banishment, the contest between the two parties at Jerusalem virtually, at least, became a schism; those who sided against Nehemiah drawing off, becoming permanently affiliated with the people of Samaria, modifying their Judaism accordingly, and thus producing the new form of religion known as Samaritanism. It may have taken a generation or more for the new movement to assume its distinctive form. W. J. B.

The captivities which befell the kingdom of Israel are recorded in 2 K. 15 : 29 ; 17 : 6 ; 18 : 11, and 1 Chron. 5 : 26. These records speak of two deportations of the people of the kingdom of the Ten Tribes—the first at the hand of Pul (or Tiglath-pileser II.); and the second at that of Sargon, after the taking of Samaria. The first affected Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh—i.e., the Israelites of the Gilead, or the region beyond the Jordan—and also the Israelites of the Galilee region—i.e., Naphtali, Asher, Zebulun, and Issachar. The second is described as befalling the kingdom as a whole, after the taking of Samaria; but it seems to have fallen especially upon the tribes of Dan, Ephraim, the other half of Manasseh, and the Israelitish portion of Benjamin. These tribes coincide as to their areas with the later province of Samaria. The return from the Babylonish captivity, which we find described in Ezra and Nehemiah, was of the Jews of the southern kingdom, which, although generally described as consisting of two tribes, really included Judah, Levi, what was left of Simeon, and a large part of Benjamin. We hear nothing, in either the Bible or parallel sources, of the return of Israelites from the more northern region, to which the Assyrians carried them captive, although some think it not improbable that part of them did come back with the returning people of Judah.

Thus far we have the facts. But as to the inferences which have been drawn from these facts, there is no agreement. The open questions are as follows: 1. Did the Assyrian captivity of Israel mean the deportation of the bulk of the people beyond the Tigris, or only that of the heads of society? 2. Did the Israelites who were carried captive lose their identity among their heathen neighbors, or did they maintain it by emigrating to a more remote country, or are they to be sought in the general body of Hebrews we afterward find in the region between the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea? The generally accepted answer to these questions is that the Ten Tribes were carried captive as a whole, leaving a mere fragment in numbers as well as in importance in the land of Israel; that the captives were lost to their nation, possibly, by absorption, but more probably by both migration and absorption; that the Jews of later times, with some exceptions, are the descendants of the people of Judah; that the identity of the posterity of the Ten Tribes is one of the unsolved problems of historic ethnology. On this basis of supposition have been built a multitude of theories, of which the identification of the Israelites with our North American Indians has furnished the basis for the historical romance called “The Book of Mormon.” The Afghans, the Falashas of Abyssinia, the Bani-Israel of Bombay, the Jews of China, and the Mexicans, have each in turn been identified with the Ten Tribes. Last of all comes the Anglo-Israel theory, which identifies them with the Anglo-Saxon race, and sees in the extent and influence of the British Empire an accomplishment of the prophecies made to Israel. To me it seems that the supposition of the loss of the Ten Tribes is a mistake, and one which cannot be reconciled with the teachings of either the Old or the New Testament. The Jews of to-day are the descendants of all the tribes, who were settled in the Holy Land in Joshua’s time; and while there were some losses through absorption into pagan nationalities—Syrian, Arabic, Hellenic, and Roman—and still more through conversions to Christianity and to Islam, the integrity of the nation has not been impaired by them. It probably has gained more than it lost, through absorbing Edomites, Moabites, and the peoples settled in the Holy Land after the captivities, by the proselytism of Roman times, and by the great conversion of the Khozars of what now is Southern Russia in the Middle Ages.

1. It is a mistake to assume that any of the four captivities meant the deportation of a whole people. That would have been an undertaking too great for even a Nebuchadnezzar. Nor is such a deportation really implied in the biblical statements, as is seen when we compare one part of the record with another. Thus we read in 2 K. 15:29 and in 1 Chron. 5:26 of the captivity of the seven tribes of the Galilean and Perean regions in terms which, if taken to the foot of the letter, would mean that all the population was carried off. Yet in 2 Chron. 30:1-13 we find Hezekiah sending out his messengers “to Ephraim and Manasseh,” and “throughout all Israel, even from Dan to Beersheba,” to invite the “children of Israel” to keep the great passover with him at Jerusalem. He speaks to them as “the remnant that are escaped of you out of the hand of the kings of Assyria,” and beseeches them to turn to God, that their brethren and children may “find compassion before them that led them captive.” While most of those who heard the message only mocked at it, “divers of Asher and Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem.” And this minority of “the remnant” of these three tribes made with the people of Judah “a very great congregation.” It was their presence that moved Isaiah to the outburst of thankful song over the latter-day glory conferred upon “the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,” in which one ground of exultation is, “Thou hast multiplied the nation; thou hast increased their joy” (Isa. 9:1-3). I may remark here that the Hebrew word shaar, translated “remnant,” does not necessarily mean a mere fragment, but simply that which is left when something else has been taken away, whether what has been taken is more or less than what is left. So, again, we find Ezekiel, who was taken captive in the first Babylonish captivity, writing to those who inhabited “those waste places of the land of Israel,” and who were accustomed to say: “Abraham was one, and he inherited the land; but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance.” The message God sends them through His prophet is one of rebuke for their sins and impurities, and a threat of further desolation of Israel: “The pride of her power shall cease.” Thus Scripture explains Scripture; and so do the monuments in the same sense. In 2 K. 17:6; 18:11 we have the statement that the Assyrians “took Samaria and carried Israel away unto Assyria.” Sargon’s account of the matter shows exactly what this means: “The city of Samaria I besieged; it I took; 27,280 of its inhabitants I carried away; fifty wagons I took from them; their other possessions I suffered to be taken [by the soldiers]; my lieutenant I placed over them; the tribute of the previous king I imposed upon them.” This exact statement shows how little of a clean sweep was made; and we have no reason to suppose that the previous deportation of the Perean and Galilean tribes was on a greater scale than this, which carried away but 27,280 persons from the Samarian tribes. At most it was a deportation of the heads of society, and the whole number taken from the northern kingdom cannot have been much over sixty thousand people. This left a great body, who, in the theocratic sense, were a headless “remnant,” but, in the view of modern statistics, were the bulk of the Israelitish nation. “The most numerous class—i.e., the poorest,” to use the language of modern sociology, was left in possession.

2. It is not agreed whether the Israelite captives were all transferred to Media, or part of them settled in the Assyrian plain. From the time of the Babylonian Talmud doctors have disputed as to the location of “Halah, Habor, the river Gozan, and Are-Madai (translated “the cities of the Medes”). The best Talmudic authority places Halah at Holvan, whose Jews paid tribute to the Prince of the Exile, the ruler of the Jews of Babylon; Habor at Hadyab in Adiabene, the seat of a Jewish school and the scene of the conversion of Queen Helena to Judaism; Gozan at Guinzak, whose Jews in the second century were so ignorant that they knew nothing of the Flood or of Job; and Are-Madai at Hamadan or Ecbatana, the capital of Media. What is there to forbid our identification of the Jews at these well-known centres of Jewish population and worship with the descendants of the Israelitish exiles whom Tiglath-pileser II. placed there? Chiefly a Jewish tradition that, instead of remaining where they were placed, they chose to migrate farther from their own country. In fact, from the Persian

Gulf to the Black Sea every province had its Jewish population. Some considerable cities were entirely in their hands. While Babylon, no doubt, was the centre of the dispersed of Judah, there is no reason to suppose that the Jews in these other provinces were not descendants of Israelitish as well as Judean captives. The farther north and east we go in that region, the stronger is the presumption that the Jewish population comes, at least in part, from the northern kingdom.

When we turn to the New Testament, we find not a hint of the loss of the Ten Tribes from the rest. Our Lord is born and labors among the people of the region which suffered by the first deportation of Israelites to Assyria, and whom even the Judeans owned as their countrymen. From this region came all His apostles except Judas Iscariot, who was a Judean. Choice is made of twelve apostles for the establishment of the Church, with distinct reference to the number of the tribes among whom they are to labor (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:30). At the day of Pentecost we find Peter making his appeal to “all the house of Israel;” and “Parthians, Medes, and Elamites” from the regions of the Assyrian captivity are the very first mentioned as hearers of the wonderful word of power; after them come “the dwellers in Mesopotamia,” the region of the Babylonish captivity. Paul speaks to Agrippa of “the promise made of God unto our fathers; unto which promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to come.” James addresses his Epistle “to the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion.” John in the Revelation witnesses the sealing of twelve thousand of each of the twelve tribes, only Dan being omitted, while Levi is included in the number. In many places throughout that book “twelve” is used with mystic reference to Jewish history.

Still more noticeable is the silence of the New Testament. We may infer that this notion of a loss of ten tribes had no recognition in the New Testament age from the fact that it never is alleged by any one in arguing with the Jews. Our Lord might well have used it in His warnings to the Jews that mere descent from Abraham would not stand in the way of the rejection of an unbelieving people (John 8), from whom the kingdom would be taken away and given to a people bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. 21:43). Stephen might well have urged it on his murderers as right in the line of his great argument from the past of the nation. Paul might have used it with telling effect in the ninth chapter of Romans, in the third of Galatians, and other passages. But not one of them refers to this alleged fact of the loss of the greater part of the elect people from the national fellowship. The belief in the loss of the Ten Tribes out of the body of the Hebrews, and their present existence in some part of the world, may be traced, I think, to the general acceptance of certain “travellers’ tales” in the medieval literature of the Jews. A careful account of this curious romancing is given by Dr. A. Neubauer in the Jewish Quarterly Review for 1888-89. R. E. Thompson.

Israel, as a whole, is intact now, as it was before the split into two kingdoms. In other words, the Ten Tribes are not lost. This can be confirmed and established by direct scriptural evidence. Israel and Judah go into the same exile; into various provinces of the one great power, which at first constituted the Assyrian, then the Chaldean, and afterward the Persian Empire. Their common misery brings about a closer union of the descendants of Jacob. Their oppressors know of no tribal distinctions; and as the great monarchies undergo their successive changes, the fact of there having been two deportations of captive Israelites from the petty kingdoms of Israel and Judah seems to have been forgotten. The Persians knew of no distinction between Jews and Israelites, for Haman wished to destroy, not all the Judeans merely, but all the “Hebrews.” In this “fused” state, as the seventy years of the later Captivity draw to a close, the people ripen for their return. The reason why there is no definite promise of return to the Ten Tribes after a fixed period is because they sinned in revolting. To have given one promise to them and another to the Judeans would have been contrary to the Divine purpose of unity. The revolters repent in captivity; in heart they return to their allegiance; and when the seventy years are ended, the captives go back as one nation. It is not contended that all went back together, but that some of all the tribes returned, and thus formed a representative Israel. Besides, the return is the reverse of the captivities. Judah is the later deposit; they have not struck so deep a root in exile as their brethren, hence they return first, and in greater numbers. Whereas the captives from the Ten Tribes were the earlier deposit; they have been many more years in captivity, they have consequently struck a deeper root; many of them have forgotten their own land (this is easy to understand, seeing these were never the truer Israelites); they have formed new homes and new interests in their exile. Many, again, of these did not want to return, “they mingled with the heathen and learned their works.” In other words, these were not the repentant and faithful Jews. They had no heart longings for Zion; and as they did not want God, He did not want them. They stayed behind; a few may have returned in later expeditions after the temple was rebuilt and national life was again in existence. Besides these two classes (the elect and the apostate), there were others who stayed behind in exile, and who, by keeping up their distinctive character as Israelites, and by sending contributions to Jerusalem, did good service among the heathen as a witnessing people, preparing the way for Christ. These, however, never became a “lost” people; the places of their habitation are clearly defined in the New Testament, where they are spoken of as “the dispersed among the Gentiles,” and whom it is the custom to call “the Jews of the Dispersion.” With these exceptions, some of all the Twelve Tribes returned, those tribes preponderating who had the greatest reverence and longing for the one sanctuary at Jerusalem, and for the preservation of the Israelitish ideal of unity; and naturally these were from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi; but that the God-fearing portion of the other tribes returned with them also there can be no well-grounded doubt. The purpose of God in sending His people into captivity is otherwise made of none effect. It is maintained that the Captivity was intended as a furnace of affliction wherein the disunited fragments of the nation would be melted into one again; and that on the return from captivity they did in fact return as one representative Israel—with old animosities gone with tribal distinctions all but obliterated; for of the combination of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, as a powerful faction, opposed to Judah, we hear no more. They, like the other tribes, after this lesson of affliction, become “the lost sheep of the house of Israel, whom the Good Shepherd afterward came to gather into His fold. The scriptural confirmation of this is an easy task. It was a matter of prophecy that the Twelve Tribes should return and be reunited. The hope of this runs through the prophets. Isaiah chaps. 10 to 14 is a chief passage, especially 10:20; 11:12, 13; 14:1. So Jeremiah 3:12, 14, 18, 20-25. Also chap. 31 in its whole connection. Ezekiel, who took part in the Exile, 37:11, 12, 15, 22. These selected passages show that Israel returned to its own land, after the Exile had done its work upon them, a corporate nation.

Another proof is to be found in the Book of Ezra, which is emphatically the book of the return and restoration of Israel (both of Jews and Israelites) from captivity; the resettlement in Judah and Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the temple, and the ordering of the one fold, according to the law of Moses. The edict of Cyrus for their return is made to “all Israel.” Also Ezra 1:1-4; 7:13. The first expedition of the Israelites to their own country was under the conduct of twelve leaders—Zerubbabel and Joshua with ten others (Ezra 2:2; Neh. 7:7). Twelve leaders of a returning band of Jewish exiles leads to the inevitable conclusion that these twelve men were leading back the representatives of the Twelve Tribes. The remnant that should be saved thus fulfilling the hopes of the prophets.

Abundant liturgical proofs also may be found in Ezra 6:17; 8:35, and in Ps. 107-147. And, finally, all New Testament references to the tribes of Israel are to the effect that the nation in the time of our Lord and His apostles was a united one. (See Luke 2:36; Matt. 19:28; Acts 26:7; James 1:1; Rev. 7:4-8.)

If the Ten Tribes did not go back with the other two, but have remained all this long time in an unknown land and unknown, then it must be confessed “they have no part in David,” and are clean cut off altogether. But against such a conclusion the purpose of God, the prophecies, the whole tenor of Holy Scripture, and the nature of things are clearly opposed. It only needs an intelligent acquaintance with the whole history, and a spiritual insight into the true significance of the captivities, to refute the popular delusion about the lost Ten Tribes. Anon.

1st to 18th of Jeroboam, of Israel.