- 88-
The account of the Ten Tribes by Josephus adds little to our knowledge. He describes
them as "an immense multitude, not to be estimated by numbers," and as located "beyond
the Euphrates" (Ant. 11. 5, 2). Equally, if not even more vague, are the later references to
them in 4 Esdras, and in Rabbinic writings.* From all this we may infer that there was no
longer any reliable historical information on the subject.
- See the quotations as to the fate of the Ten Tribes in Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah, i. pp. 14-16.
On another point, however, we have important information. We know that with these
exiles went their priests (2 Kings 17:27), although not of Levitical descent (2 Chronicles
11:14). Thus the strange mixture of the service of the Lord and foreign rites must have
continued. In the course of time the heathen elements would naturally multiply and
assume greater prominence, unless, indeed, the people learned repentance by national
trials, or from higher teaching. Of this there is not any evidence in the case of Israel; and
if the footsteps of these wanderers shall ever be clearly tracked, we expect to find them
with a religion composed of various rites, but prevailingly heathen, yet with memories of
their historical past in traditions, observances, and customs, as well as in names, and
bearing the marks of it even in their outward appearance.
On yet another point does the testimony of the Assyrian records confirm the Biblical
narrative. From the inscriptions we learn that Sargon transported to Samaria, in room of
the exiled Israelites, inhabitants of countries conquered by him. And when in 2 Kings
17:24 we read that these new colonists were "brought from Babylon, and from Cuthah,
and from Ava and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim," we recognize the names of
places which, according to the Assyrian inscriptions, were conquered by Sargon, and
whence, as was his wont, he deported the inhabitants.*
- It has, we think, been fully established that the deportation mentioned in 2 Kings 17:24
was that made by Sargon, and not the later one by Esar-haddon (Ezra 4:2).
From the inscriptions we further learn that these transportations were successive, and that
even the earliest of them did not take place immediately on the removal of the Israelites.
Thus we understand how lions, so numerous in Palestine at one time, but gradually
diminished with the growth of the population, once more increased among the scanty and
scattered settlers. The sacred historian recognizes in this the hand of the LORD.*
- At the same time, the rendering of 2 Kings 17:25, 26, in the A.V. is not correct. Instead
of "therefore the Lord sent lions among them," it should simply be, "and the Lord sent
lions amongst them." Nor should the attribution of things to God be always pressed in its
strictly literal sense. Sometimes it is even an Oriental mode of expression. Comp. 2
Chronicles 35:21.
(^)