At first glance, the story of deportation as told in 2 Kings 17 is very much as
told in the Assyrian sources—a punishment that was limited to the people of
the recently conquered region. But a closer reading betrays a tension between
the proposition that only the people in Samaria and its immediate periphery
were deported (as Sargon’s inscription tells us), and the implication that the
entirety of Israel was deported—exiled—as the final blow to its polity. The
Hebrew original uses the account of the fall of Samaria as the platform for
summarizing the fate of the entire Israelite people: the Assyrian king “captured
Samaria and exiled Israel” (lakhad et Shomron Va-Yigel et Yisra’el; 2 Kings 17 : 6 ).
All versions emphasize the totality of the “transfer,” to use the Vulgate’s
rendering. The story of the third campaign speaks of one deportation—that
of the people of Samaria—but is the platform for the story of the exile of the
entire ten tribes.
The author of 2 Kings provides a capsule summary of the events that dri-
ves the point home. Sending a cautionary message to his Judahite readers,
he concludes: “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... and
wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger. For they served
idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing”
( 2 Kings 17 : 7 – 13 ). The list of sins committed by the Israelites goes on and
on, with constant reference back to their “original sin”—the building
by Jeroboam of sites of worship, in competition with Jerusalem. The
Israelites “persisted” in Jeroboam’s sins “[u]ntil the Lord removed Israel out
of his sight.... So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto
this day” ( 2 Kings 17 : 22 ).
The interpretation of the deportations as a single, divine act of punishment
resulting in exile is reinforced in the following chapter, in which another
Assyrian campaign, Sennacherib’s, is the focus. Only two decades after the
destruction of Samaria, the Judahites face the Assyrian army. As a preface to
their account, the biblical authors briefly recap the story of Israel’s fate: the
Israelites were exiled to Assyria to “Halah and on the Habor, on the river Gozan
and in the cities of Medes because they did not obey the Lord their God but
violated his covenant” ( 18 : 9 – 12 ). Everything in the previous chapters is com-
pressed into one simple story: the Israelites had sinned and were exiled. The
complicated history of Israel as a vassal of the Assyrians and the history of the
various campaigns and deportations are no longer relevant; nor is the fact of
Assyrian might. Here, the Lord God is the agent of deportation, and the crime
is sacrilege. Imperial expansion and forced migration are transformed into a
narrative of sin, divine punishment, and exile.
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