The kings of Israel and Judah

King Hoshea

The kingdom of Israel (the north) · Reigned nine years (2 Kings 17:1) · Evil before God · 2 Kings 17

Hoshea, the last king of the northern kingdom, came to the throne by assassinating Pekah and reigned nine years. He did evil, though Scripture notes, not as intensely as the kings before him. When he stopped paying tribute to Assyria and secretly sought help from Egypt, the Assyrian king besieged Samaria, took it after three years, and carried Israel away into exile. So the northern kingdom ended, and Scripture gives a long, sober explanation of why.

In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.2 Kings 17:6 (KJV)

The last king of Israel

Hoshea the son of Elah killed Pekah and reigned nine years in Samaria. He did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him, a small qualification that lightens the verdict without removing it. He became a vassal of Assyria, paying tribute, until he tried to break free.

Hoshea sent messengers to the king of Egypt, seeking an ally against Assyria, and stopped paying the yearly tribute. It was a fatal gamble. The king of Assyria discovered the conspiracy, seized and imprisoned Hoshea, and came against the whole land.

The fall of Samaria

The Assyrian army besieged Samaria for three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and settled them in distant regions. So the northern kingdom of Israel, ten tribes, came to an end about two hundred years after it had broken from the house of David, and its people were scattered among the nations, never to return as a kingdom.

Foreigners were brought in to settle the land, and their mixture with those who remained gave rise to the people later known as the Samaritans.

Why the kingdom fell

The book of Kings pauses here for one of its longest explanations, making plain that the exile was no accident of politics but the judgment of God. This came to pass because the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, feared other gods, walked in the statutes of the nations, and did secretly things that were not right. They had built high places, set up images, served idols, and used divination, and sold themselves to do evil, provoking the LORD.

And the LORD testified against Israel by all the prophets, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, but they would not hear, and hardened their necks, like the necks of their fathers. So the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight. The idolatry Jeroboam had founded had, over two centuries, destroyed the nation, exactly as the prophets warned.

The biblical verdict and where it points

Hoshea is judged evil, though less so than his predecessors, and under him the northern kingdom fell forever. His reign is the tragic end of the story that began with Jeroboam's golden calves, the long refusal to hear the prophets brought at last to its reckoning.

The fall of Israel is a solemn warning that God's patience, though vast, is not endless, and that a people who will not turn from idols and will not hear his word cannot presume upon his mercy for ever. Yet even as the ten tribes were scattered, the prophets spoke of a day when God would gather his people from all nations under one Shepherd King. That gathering begins in Christ, the Son of David, who came to seek and to save the lost, even in the region of fallen Israel, and to build a kingdom that will never be carried into exile.

A note on the record: everything here is drawn from the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles sometimes tell a reign differently, Chronicles often adding a king's repentance or building works, and where they differ this is said plainly rather than smoothed over. The exact lengths and overlaps of the reigns are genuinely complex, because kings often shared the throne with a son for a time, so the totals in Scripture do not always add up in a simple line. The verdict good or evil is the Bible's own assessment, whether a king did right or evil in the sight of the LORD.

Related: Pekah · Zedekiah · Jeroboam I · All the kings of Israel and Judah