The Fall of Samaria
Hoshea, the last king of Israel, stops paying tribute to Assyria and sends envoys to Egypt instead. The response is a three-year siege of Samaria, and in its ninth year the city falls and the population is deported into Assyria and settled in the towns of the Medes.
Assyrian records of Sargon II claim the capture and count the deportees in the thousands, and the resettlement of other conquered peoples in their place is standard imperial policy — the origin of the mixed population later called Samaritans.
The biblical account pauses the narrative to explain at length why it happened, in the longest such passage in Kings. The prophet Hosea had spent a career making the same argument through the metaphor of a broken marriage. The ten northern tribes disappear from history as identifiable groups, and only Judah remains.
Where in scripture
[1] In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel for nine years. [2] He did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. [3] Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against him, and Hoshea became his servant, and brought him tribute. [4] The king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to So king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria seized him, and bound him in prison. [5] Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. …
2 Kings 17:1–23 — opening verses
[9] In the fourth year of king Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it. [10] At the end of three years they took it. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken. [11] The king of Assyria carried Israel away to Assyria, and put them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, [12] because they didn’t obey Yahweh their God’s voice, but transgressed his covenant, even all that Moses the servant of Yahweh commanded, and would not hear it or do it.
2 Kings 18:9–12
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, a public-domain translation.
