But did the Jews of Judea and their king escape, who
had thus brought the king of Assyria down to murder
their own countrymen, and lay that fair land waste?
Not they. A very few years more, the Assyrians
were back again, and overran Judea itself, laying the
country waste with fire and sword, till nothing was
left to them, but the mere city of Jerusalem.
And so they, too, were filled with the fruit of their
own devices. In their madness they had destroyed
their brethren, the people of Israel, who ought to
have been a safeguard for them to the north; now there
was nothing and no man to prevent the Assyrians, or
any other invaders, from pouring right down into their
land. Truly says Solomon, ’He that diggeth
a pit, shall fall into it, and he who breaketh a hedge,
a serpent shall bite him.’ From that day,
Judah became weaker and weaker, standing all alone.
Good king Hezekiah, good king Josiah, could only stave
off her ruin for a few years; a little while longer,
and her cup was full too, and the Babylonians came
and swept the Jews away into captivity, as the Assyrians
had swept away Israel, and that fair land lay desolate
for many a year.
The king of Assyria, we read, after he had carried
away the people of Israel, brought heathens from Assyria,
and settled them in the Holy Land, instead of the
Israelites. But the Lord sent lions among them,
we read; the land, I suppose, lying waste, the wild
beasts increased, and became very dangerous:
so these poor ignorant settlers sent to the king
of Assyria, to beg for a Jewish priest, to teach them,
as they said, the manner of the god of that land, that
they might worship him, and not be terrified by the
lions any more. It was a simple, confused notion
of theirs: but it brought a blessing with it;
for the king of Assyria sent them one of the Jewish
priests who had been carried away from Samaria; and
he came and lived at Beth-el, and taught them to fear
the Lord. So these poor people got some confused
notion of the one true God: but they mixed it
up sadly with their old heathen idolatry, and made
gods of their own, and some of them even burnt their
children in the fire, to Adrammelech and Anammelech,
the gods of Sepharvaim, from which town they had come.
And so they went on for several hundred years, marrying
with the remnant of the Israelites who were left behind,
and worshipping idols and the true God at the same
time. Now these people are the Samaritans, of
whom you read so often in the New Testament.
The Jews, when they came back, hated and despised
the Samaritans, and would not speak to them, eat with
them, trade with them, because they were only half-blooded
Jews, and did not observe Moses’ law rightly;
and so they were left to themselves: but as
time went on, they seemed to have got rid of their
old idolatry, and built themselves a temple on Mount
Gerizim, by Samaria, in Jacob’s old haunts,
by Jacob’s well, and there worshipped they knew
not what. But still they did their best.
And their reward came at last.
