king of Assyria, and his people were carried captive from Damascus, and transplanted into Upper Media. Here, in a district on the west of the Caspian sea, where the ancient river Araxes flows into it, there dwells at the present day a race of foreign aspect, called Usbecks, or Uskeck Tartars, who may perhaps be descendants of these captive Syrians. The conquests of Tiglathpileser extended round to the north and east of Israel, and the kingdom was again confined within narrow limits: its frontiers were threatened by foreign enemies, and within it was a prey to civil faction. Soon after the close of the war with Judah, in the third year of the reign of its king Ahaz, Pekah was murdered by Hoshea, one of his captains, who formed a conspiracy against him; after an interval of nine years of faction and civil war, Hoshea triumphed over his opponent and reigned in his stead.

AN INTERREGNUM OF 9 YEARS OF ANARCHY FOLLOWS.

HOSHEA, reigned nine years, and was the last of the kings of Israel. He did evil in the sight of the LORD, though he himself was not so flagrantly wicked as some of his predecessors; but the nation had sunk into the lowest state of corruption and impiety, and had not strength to withstand the rapidly growing power of the kings of Assyria. When Shalmaneser marched to invade his kingdom, Hoshea made no resistance, but yielded, as he was commanded to do by the prophets. The conqueror, satisfied

with his submission, and with exacting from him a heavy present or tribute, withdrew his army, and left him in comparative peace. Had he remained true to this forced agreement, and obeyed in this the oft repeated injunctions of Isaiah, he might yet perhaps have preserved his kingdom; but in violation of his oaths to Shalmaneser, and in direct opposition to the command of the prophet, he sent ambassadors to So, king of Egypt, to seek his alliance, and at the same time, he refused to send the tribute agreed upon to Assyria. His disobedience and folly proved fatal. As he might have expected, the king of Assyria was inflamed with resentment, at what he regarded as a breach of his engagements, or rather as a revolt against his authority; he quickly assembled an army, entered the kingdom of Israel, and laid it waste: he then marched to Samaria. This city determined to resist; the inhabitants shut their gates, and perseveringly endured a siege of unexampled severity, which lasted three years. The horrors of famine, and the sword of their enemies, the penalties denounced against idolatry, were now fearfully experienced. Egypt sent no succour, the prophets offered no hope of deliverance by more than human means, and at length every art and every effort being exhausted, Hoshea was compelled to submit: Samaria was taken by Shalmaneser, king of Nineveh, in the ninth year of the reign of Hoshea, and the people were carried captive into Assyria, seven hundred and twenty-one years before the birth of Christ.

Their fate was so exactly foretold by Moses, when he placed before the Israelites the judgments which would fall upon them, if they forsook the Law, that in reading this portion of their history, we are lost in astonishment, at the hardness of heart, and blindness of unbelief, which could so fatally seduce them into idolatry. With such warnings recorded in their sacred books, with the admonitions of the prophets supported by frequent evidences of divine power, and with a succession of disaster and defeats, inflicted by the heathen nations whose gods they worshipped, in the midst of, and in perverse forgetfulness of all these facts and prophecies, did the Israelites leave the commandments of the LORD their God, reject his statutes, and make to themselves molten images, and worshipped all the host of Heaven: they even made their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire before Moloch, and "sold themselves to do evil." For these repeated transgressions, God rejected them, and delivered them into the hands of the spoilers; as He had rent the ten tribes from Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, so He now cast them away, and gave them into the hands of the king of Assyria; "because they departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, but did evil in the sight of the LORD.”

The Ten Tribes were carried away captive, and dispersed in Media* and Persia.

The

* Media was at this time subject to Assyria, though it revolted some years after. We do not attempt to enter upon the question

sacred history is silent as to their after destiny, nor have the learned discovered any positive indications of their existence as a separate nation, nor any undisputed traces of their descendants in modern times, though many conjectures have been put forth. More is known respecting the people transplanted by the conqueror into the deserted kingdom of Israel. Shalmaneser removed hither men from Babylon, Hamath, Cuthah, and other places, supposed to be all situated on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, and who were called indiscriminately Cuthites by the Israelites: these he caused to settle in the desolate kingdom of Samaria. But they were few, and no doubt dispirited with their miserable exile from their native land; and the deserted towns, and despoiled and wasted country remained but scantily peopled, and ill cultivated. The effects of a ruined and servile population were soon visible; the country lay waste, and lions and beasts of prey took unmolested possession of the wilder districts, and soon increasing in numbers, they descended into the open country, and attacked the abodes of men. Terrified and dismayed, the superstitious inhabitants considered it a divine punishment, believing that the lions were sent amongst them by the god of

of the future history of the Ten Tribes: whether they returned with the Ten Tribes of Judah and Benjamin, or whether their descendants are still to be found in Persia: volumes have been written on the subject, and to some of them the curious reader is referred.

the country, because they had neglected his worship: for like all the ancients, they were taught that every district had its tutelar divinity, and that the gods of every country were to be propitiated by honours and worship, offered by those who dwelt in the land, whatever might be their own particular deities. The Cuthites therefore sent to Shalmaneser, to ask from him an Israelitish priest, in order that he might instruct them in the worship of Jehovah. Shalmaneser complied with their demand, and one of the priests of the captive Israelites was sent back to them; and he dwelt at Bethel, and taught the Cuthites, how they should fear the LORD.' But the worship was debased and degraded; it was not the worship of one Supreme God, but merely the addition of another deity to their own idols; every nation made gods of their own, and put them in their houses and high places, and they made priests of the lowest of the people, and served their own gods after the manner of other heathen nations. These Cuthites thus settled in Samaria were called Samaritans, and are the ancestors of the Samaritans mentioned in the New Testament, and whose history is mingled with that of the Jews, after the return of the latter from the seventy years' captivity.

We here close the account of the kingdom of Israel, and return to that of Judah, at the death of Hezekiah.