While the overall thrust is to affirm the Lord of Israel’s divine supremacy
over the region, the specifics are clues to the understanding in the period of the
Assyrian policy of deportation. The Assyrian king is depicted as involved in the
cultural life of the deportees, even to the extent of interfering in it in order to
increase stability. The mention of the only partial success of his cultural
engineering is significant. The (future) Samaritans learn the new ways, but
stick to their old practices as well. The biblical knowledge of this hybridity was
later a touchstone for thinking about deported Israelites. One central view
holds that they, like the peoples brought to Samaria, had likely adopted the
ways of their new cultural settings, but also might have retained a memory of
their earlier, Israelite practices.
Even if we have every reason to question the on-the-ground success of the
empire’s cultural engineering projects, it is clear that, at the very least, Assyrian
kings were eager that as many people as possible within their domain be
“counted as Assyrians.” At issue were the demographic, economic, and political
needs of the empire. To be counted as Assyrian was not a matter of “becoming”
Assyrian, but referred primarily to the duties that the original Assyrians
incurred. One phrase that recurs in the inscriptions is “Corve ́e labor like that
of the Assyrians.”^20 To be counted as Assyrian also brought military service.
Deportations were a useful way to populate the Assyrian army—a “truly
multinational force!” as many scholars (glossingly) describe it.^21
While the story tells us what happened to the imported peoples of the
region, it leaves a gaping question as to the final disposition of the deported
Israelites. Where did they go? Where were they taken? What was the fate of the
deportees in their final location—did they, like the new Samaritans, continue
their original worship? There is scattered evidence that provides only bits of an
answer. The biblical source tells us that the king took the Israelites “away into
Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and
in the cities of Medes” ( 2 Kings 17 : 6 ). All of these locations were within Assyria
proper. The region of the “cities of Medes” was located to the east of the empire,
beyond its original boundaries, and was fully incorporated into Assyria only
after 716. It is also likely that many of the deportees were settled on farmlands
owned by high-ranking Assyrian officials, priests, and aristocrats.^22 We know
that many of them would have been equipped with skills beneficial to the
Assyrian war effort and would have enjoyed “preferred or at least reasonable”
or even “good [treatment].”^23
Archaeological and documentary evidence from the region shows that
many deportees were not completely dispersed but settled in groups in major
cities. They were allowed to own property, marry, and conduct their own
businesses—a semi-fulfillment of Rabshakeh’s promise of a familiar “land of
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