102 



over tlie fertile plains of Palestine, and the rich merchant 

 cities of Phoenicia, and how heavy a brunt of the conflict fell 

 upon the Jewish people. It is in this unceasing hostility 

 between the two great powers of the East, which was ever 

 being carried on, either by latent currents of intrigue or in the 

 fierce flame of battle, that we find the causes which led to the 

 fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. 



The long chain of bloodshed and assassination which forms 

 the concluding chapter of Israelite histoi-y is terminated by 

 the reign of Hoshea, who seized the throne of Pekah. In the 

 earlier part of his reign he appears to have been an ally of 

 Assyria, but during the siege of Tyre by Shalmanesar IV. 

 (B.C. 727) he yielded to the intrigue of So (Sabaka), king of 

 Egypt (2 Kings xvii. 4-5), and withheld the tribute due to 

 Assyria, declaring himself an ally of Egypt by " sending' 

 messengers to the court of Egypt. ■'^ This drew upon him the 

 vengeance of Shalmanesar, who " came up throughout all the 

 land, and went to Samaria and besieged it three years." 

 During the wars against Tyre and Samaria, the Assyrian king 

 Shalmanesar died, and Sargon the Tartan, or Commander-in- 

 Chief,* seized the throne. He completed the capture of these 

 cities, and carried away into captivity, as he states in the 

 Khorsabad inscriptions, 27,280 of the inhabitants. The fall 

 of Samaria took place in B.C. 721, the first year of Sargon's 

 reign. 



The place of the Israelites was filled by bands of colonists, 

 who had no doubt exhibited too strong a favouritism for the 

 Babylonian rebel prince Merodach Baladan; and who were 

 consequently transported from their native cities of Cutha 

 Ava and Sepharvaim (2 Kings xvii. 24) and from Hamath, 

 whose king Ilubadi had been defeated by Sargon. The 

 causes, and indeed the modus operandi of the fall of the king- 

 dom of Judah about a century and a half later, were almost 

 exactly the same. 



The intrigues of the Pharaohs of the twenty-sixth Egyptian 

 dynasty brought about the fall of Judah, as those of the 

 twenty-fifth had culminated in the fall of Samaiua. The 

 vacillating attitudes of -lohoiachim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah 



* The Tartan HebreAv 1^11^ was the iar-inn-nu >->-^ ^l^]] */- of the 

 Assyrian inscriptions. This word is an abstract derivative from tcrtu, 

 " a hiw," the Hebrew '"T^n and the Tartan was therefore the chief hiwgiver 

 or coraniander, and ranked, as we know from the Eponym canons, next to 

 the king. There is in the British Museum (W. A. I., vol. i., pi, liv., No, 3) 

 a despatch from Sennacherib when acting as tartan to his father Sargon. 



