okay let us continue with our discussion of the political and social history in the northern
kingdom of israel and i'd like to make a few key points but really focus on the dissolution
of the northern kingdom with its uh invasion by the assyrians and the exile of the 10 northern
tribes and the importation of the samaritans we're going to explore those in a little more detail
in subsequent videos but for now let's just have a look at a few key ideas first of all
let's just look at something that's important for the 8th century and from the perspective of the
outside of the jewish world we'll look at some of the assyrian documents and i i want to go over the
map with you in a few minutes so don't panic if you're not exactly sure where is the syria
anyways i wasn't either we'll have a quick look at the map and i'll make things really clear so
in this uh amazing monolith the kirk monolith with which celebrates the achievements of the assyrian
king shamanism iii who will be very important for israel there is a discussion there of the battle
of kharkar which was in 853 before the common era and a few battles that were subsequent to
that particular conflict this describes a period in which charmanesser participated in battles not
in israel elsewhere in northern syria for the most part uh against a a multi-state or
multi-regional alliance of 12 kings and what's especially interesting for our purposes
uh this this alliance was led by the the hati and the sea coast which would have been syria
and uh of course along the mediterranean coast uh listed among the 12 kings there is king achav
the israelite right remember ahab ahab married to jezebel was one of the last kings of the northern
kingdom of israel and he provides the largest single contribution of chariots 2 000 of them and
10 000 troops which puts him right up there with the biggest contributions to this war effort which
i think is fascinating because it gives you a picture of what's going on really in the northern
kingdom now contrasted to the southern kingdom and judah they had a lot of internal problems
remember this is the rebel state they broke away from judah over issues of taxation and over issues
of uh you know how they're being represented so to speak to use kind of an american motif i'm
recording this by the way while they're still trying to figure out who won the 2020 election
the the northern kingdom had quite a bit of tumult in the 9th century especially when compared to
the southern kingdom unlike the south they did not have the same degree of attachment to the
idea of a davidic rule through the tribe of judah obviously the southern kingdom was ruled by judah
and they had ongoing conflict judah over the bordering territory of the tribe of benjamin
sometimes they would ally themselves with the south sometimes they would actually fight with the
south there's a lot of things going on they also have turnover of the dynasties as in many cases
generals were heavily involved the the northern israel army was quite powerful and from time to
time the leaders of the army ended up taking over the leadership of the entire region so there's a
lot of internal you know disruption going on in israel itself during the 200 years that we're
describing now between the middle of the 10th century when the kingdom split until the end
of the 8th century when the kingdom was destroyed by the assyrian invasion but even in the midst of
this tumult you can see that the northern kingdom of israel is a player regionally at this point
they are getting involved in larger geopolitical conflicts they are making big alliances like
king solomon made uh they are engaged in uh you know far-off conflicts which is gives you some
kind of picture of what the northern kingdom of israel was like within the larger context
here's an interesting find which points to the instability of the 9th century in israel
discovered by nama yahalo mac shown here is this fascinating figurine was just discovered a few
years ago here and the crown around his head there indicates he's clearly of royalty very beautifully
preserved little five centimeter figurine now the big question is though he's clearly a king
which king is he so just looking at this period alone it's possible that he could be an israelite
king this was discovered in the northern part of israel which had fallen under sway of the
syrians in aram i'll show you a map in just a second it could have been one of the kings
of the kingdom of israel as mentioned in the obelisk could have been ahab it could have been
his son yehu who mounted a ill-fated rebellion it could have been one of the kings of aram that had
invaded israel in as they the regional treaties between the various 12 kings began to break apart
it could have been ben haddad or ghazal which were the the foreign kings that that ended up
dominating the northern part of israel or it could have been a king of tyre perhaps
all of these are possibilities and it gives you a sense of what kind of chaos was going
on in israel with tremendous dynastic upheaval and regional conflict and foreign invasion and so on
okay i've kept you waiting long enough let's have a look at the map and try to sort these things out
i'm going to focus on the invasion of 720 from the assyrians uh be and we will follow up with some
detailed discussions in the next two videos but i want to give you a sense not only of that but also
its relationship to the babylonian invasion that would occur uh another couple hundred years later
so here's our heroes in jerusalem and samaria the kingdom of judah of course in the south
uh with its capital at jerusalem and we will return of course to have a much longer discussion
of jerusalem and judah in uh subsequent videos and then in the north with the capital in samaria
you have the kingdom of israel now to their north is a larger regional kingdom uh the
kingdom of aram at times in alliance with either israel or even with judah
and at times hostile and in fact in the period that we're describing now this is
when aram would invade the kingdom of israel and dominate it significantly but further north and
remember this northern trend is all following the fertile crescent so it kind of curves around a a
an open-ended hairpin turn and then begins to go to the south following the euphrates and the
tigris rivers you have the kingdom of assyria with its base in the very old city of nineveh
famous from the book of jonah and ultimately aram would get into trouble with assyria and would be
conquered by assyria are you getting the image now of kind of like the little fish is eaten by
the bigger fish is eaten by the still bigger fish and so on if you aren't think about that
because that's exactly what's going to happen here aram will swallow up northern israel and
then assyria will end up swallowing up haram and with it northern israel and then the biggest fish
which we're going to come back to in a few lectures from now is of course babylonia the
babylonian empire centered in the city known as babylon would eventually take over assyria which
had taken over aram which had taken over northern israel and they would have huge consequences for
the the history of the jews let us also mention however with the assyrian invasion there are two
really important population transfers that's kind of a neutral term from the perspective of israel
this is the exile of the ten northern tribes that we're going to talk about in the very next video
i said that so many times this video but you get the idea all these things are are all happening at
the same time uh according to the biblical account and from some fascinating non-biblical sources
uh the jews from the northern region of israel and it's not the entire population as we've mentioned
a couple of times it is several tens of thousands and particular segments of the socio-economic
profile of the kingdom of israel they are exiled to places like gozan the river khabor
the capital region in nineveh and then further to the east to the region of the medes these are
all where we know that the the ten tribes or the representatives of the ten tribes were exiled to
and we'll follow those up in the very next video at the same time part of the assyrian strategy
for dominating their conquered regions which we see in in other parts of their history as well
is not only to remove the local leadership the elite that could potentially organize a
a rebellion but to bring into the region a foreign population that destabilizes a lot of the local
relationships and alliance and so on and this would be the population known as the samaritans
who probably come from the region called kuta there are some questions about their origins
but kuta is uh where uh according to the dominant opinion the assyrians took their local population
conquered from the south and forcibly shipped them to israel to center around samaria in fact
in talmudic aramaic the samaritans are typically called kutim which is plural for kuthites
people who come from this region okay so that's what's going to happen after 7 20.
we're going to pick it up by looking at the story of those yellow arrows in the next video
what happened to the 10 lost tribes thank you very much for watching