Hoshea

Hoshea ("salvation") was the last king of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. William F. Albright has dated his reign to 732-721 B.C.E., while E. R. Thiele offers the dates 732-722 B.C.E.

Coming to the throne during the ascendancy of the Assyrian Empire, Hoshea was forced to offer substantial tribute to Shalmaneser V. He later decided to rebel and withhold payment, hoping for aid from Egypt, which itself was engaged in a struggle with the Assyria. Shalmaneser the had Hoshea arrested and laid siege to Israel's capital of Samaria. After three years, the Assyrian army withdrew to secure the succession Sargon II to the Assyrian throne. Sargon completed the pacification of the area around 720 B.C.E., deporting a reported 27,000 of its citizens beyond the Eurphates and bringing in various foreign people to colonize the land under Assyrian administration. The author of the Books of Kings states this destruction occurred "because the children of Israel sinned against the Lord" (2 Kings 17:7-24), not because of a political miscalculation on Hoshea's part.

The deportees were scattered throughout the East. Today, they are popularly known as the Lost ten tribes of Israel. The Assyrians brought various eastern peoples to colonize lands vacated by the deportees. These and later arrivals at times intermarried with the remaining Israelites to form the mixed-blood people later known as Samaritans.

Background

The Kingdom of Israel had reached the height of its power during the reign of Jeroboam II (c. 783), who succeeded in achieving independence from Syrian dominance and bring the nation to a high degree of economic prosperity. However, this affluence gave rise to moral corruption, to which the prophets Amos and Hosea formed a nucleus of opposition. A period of instability followed when Jeroboam's son Zachariah was assassinated by Shallum, who in turn was put to death by the military commander Menahem.

The rising Assyrian Empire, meanwhile, now posed a major threat. Menahem staved off invasion by paying tribute Tiglathpileser III, as did King Ahaz of Judah. Menahem's son Pekah, however, formed and alliance with King Rezin of Damascus (Syria) and attempted to influence Ahaz of Judah to join in revolt against Assyria (II Kings 16:5; Isa. 7:1-6). Judah did not respond, and when Israel and Syria attack Judah as a result, Tiglath-pileser came to Judah's aid. Menahem's son Pekahiah ruled only briefly, being assassinated by the usurper Pekah, around 735 B.C.E. During this time, the Assyrians succeeded in annexing the Israelite terriritory of the Galilee, leaving Israel with only a small terroity surrounding its capital of Samaria. Pekah's reign was put to an end when he was assassinated by Hoshea, possibly in an attempt to put a stop to the policy of resistance toward Assyria.

Biography

The son of an otherwise unknown man named Elah, Hoshea came to throne around 732 B.C.E. The biblical version of his taking the throne and a parallel reference to his ascendancy in the Assyrian records are not entirely in accord with one another. The 2 Kings states that Hoshea conspired against and slew his predecessor, Pekah (2 Kings 15:30). However, an undated inscription of Tiglath-Pileser III (reigned ruled 745–727 B.C.E.) boasts of Tiglath-Pileser III making Hoshea king after his predecessor had been overthrown. Scholars therefore speculate that Hoshea's conspiracy against Pekah, who had rebelled against Assyrian supremacy, may thus have had the active support of Assyria.

The Bible, however, indicates that Hoshea came to act as Assyria's vassal only after Tiglath-Pileser's son Shalmaneser V (reigned 727 to 722 B.C.E.) campaigned against him and forced him to submit (17:3). It gives the amount of tribute at 10 talents of gold and 10,000 talents of silver. To reconcile the accounts, it has been proposed that both Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser invaded Israel, and both extracted tribute. Assyrian records confirm that Shalmaneser campaigned in Phoenicia in the years 727 B.C.E. and 725 B.C.E.

Like all the northern kings, Hoshea is said to have done "evil in the eyes of [[Yawheh|the Lord," but it specifies that this evil was "not like the kings of Israel who preceded him." Based on the biblical description of the other kings of Israel, this probably means that he was personally a devotee of the Hebrew deity Yahweh and did not encourage Baal worship, but did support the Israelite shrines at Bethel and Dan, of which the pro-Jerusalem biblical writers strongly disapproved. (Hoshea's name in Hebrew, it should be noted, is the same as both the prophet Hosea and the Israelite commander Joshua, not to mention the Christian Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.)

Hoshea eventually withheld tribute promised to Shalmaneser, expecting the support of "So, the king of Egypt." There is some mystery as to the identity of this king: some argue that "So" refers to the Egyptian city Sais, and actually means king Tefnakht or Bakenranef (Bocchoris) of the Twenty-fourth Dynasty, which tends to match the time period in question. However, others identifying "So" with Osorkon IV or another king of the Twenty-second Dynasty, preferring to admit that the writer of the Book of Kings did not provide an accurate chronological match. Still others insist that "So" is Shabaka, a Kushite pharaoh of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt, beginning around 721 B.C.E. and may have offered support Hoshea against Assyria while consolidating the Nubian kingdom's control over Egypt.

In any case, the hoped-for Egyptian aid was not forthcoming. Shalmaneser seems to have easily apprhended Hoshea, then laid siege to Samaria. Some scholars explain that Shalmaneser must have summoned Hoshea to his court to explain the missing tribute, which resulted in the imprisonment of Hoshea and the Assyrian army sent into his land. Regardless of the sequence of events, the Assyrians captured Samaria after a siege of three years. However, Shalmaneser died shortly after the city fell, and the Assyrian army was recalled to secure the succession of Sargon II.

The land of Israel, which had resisted the Assyrians for years without a king, again revolted. Sargon returned with the Assyrian army in 720 B.C.E. and pacified the province, deporting the citizens of Israel beyond the Euphrates (some 27,290 people, according to the inscription of Sargon II), and settling people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim in their place (2 Kings 17:6, 24). The author of the Books of Kings states this destruction occurred "because the children of Israel sinned against the Lord" (2 Kings 17:7-24), rather than because of any political miscalculation on Hoshea's or his advisers part.

What happened to Hoshea following the end of the kingdom of Israel, and when or where he died, is unknown.

Legacy

The last of the 19 kings of Israel, Hoshea, ironically is considered one of the best of the northern kings by the biblical writers. Only Jehu, the pro-Yahweh usurper who ended the dynasty of Omri and Ahab, receives a better report, and he, too, does not escape criticism for allowing the northern shrines of Bethel and Dan to operate in competition with the Temple of Jerusalem.

After conquering Israel's capital of Samaria, the Assyrians brought some 27,000 or its citizens into exile, replacing them with people brought for various areas of the Babylonian Empire. As these people intermarried with the remaining native Israelites, many of them came to worship the Hebrew deity Yahweh. Such worship, however, was not acceptable to the biblical writers, who insisted that Jerusalem was the only authorize shine at which sacrifice to Yahweh could be offered. During the reign of King Josiah of Judah about a century after Hoshea's demise, the northern shrine at Bethel was finally demolished. After the Kingdom of Judah itself was defeated by the Babylonians around 587 C.E., they too suffered exile. When they returned and began rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem, they refused help from those who had not gone into exile but had intermarried with Assyrian and Babylonian women, even insisting that Jewish men divorce their "foreign" wives.

Thus, the ten northern tribes of Israel, over which Hoshea had bee the last king, became "lost." They eventually formed the kingdom of Samaria and the people known as Samaritans, who established their own temple dedicated to Yahweh at Mount Gerizim. Others eventually intermingled with the Jews of Judea and the people of Idumea, which was later forced to accept Judaism after it was conquered in 109 B.C.E. by the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus.

Northing is known of Hoshea's decendants.

House of Elah Contemporary Kings of Judah: Ahaz, Hezekiah
Regnal Titles
Preceded by: Pekah	King of Israel 732 B.C.E. – 722 B.C.E.	Conquered by Shalmaneser V of Assyria

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