THE PENTATEUCH OF THE SAMARITA^'S. 



143 



privileges — of these all Israel, North and South, were to be 

 deprived. It is expressly applied to Judah as well as to Israel, but 

 we know that all Judah was not deported by Nebuchadnezzar ; 

 " the poor of the land which had nothing " were left. Moreover, 

 the last verses of this chapter in 2 Kings is addressed to those with 

 whom JHWH had made a covenant. " Howbeit they did not 

 hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these 

 nations feared the Lord and served their graven images " 

 (2 Kings xvii, 40, 41). 



Besides, there are grave difficulties of various kinds which beset 

 this view. In the first place it would contradict many other 

 passages in Scripture. In the account of Hezekiah's Passover 

 it is told that he sent an invitation to Ephraim and Manasseh, 

 " the remnant of you that are escaped out of the hand of the 

 Kings of Assyria " (2 Chron. xxx, 6). From the Ninevite 

 marbles it is evident that Jewish chronology is too long by nearly 

 forty years. This is occasioned by joint reigns as, for instance, 

 Jotham with his father Uzziah, and Jehoram with Jehoshaphat ; 

 it seems not unlikely that during the latter years of the life of 

 Ahaz, Hezekiah was his colleague, and that he emphasized the 

 first year of his independent reign by the celebration of a Passover. 

 The first year of Hezekiah as reigning alone may well have been 

 720 B.C. Whatever difficulty there may be about the chronology 

 of Hezekiah's Passover there can be no doubt that the Passover 

 of the reign of Josiah was after the fall of Samaria, and the 

 deportation, whatever its extent, had taken place. In the 

 account of it which is to be found in 2 Chron. xxxv, 17, it is 

 said, " The children of Israel that were present kept the Pass- 

 over " ; to show that the wTiter had in his mind the distinction 

 between Judah and Israel in v. 18 we read, " all Judah and 

 Israel that were present."* 



Further, in Jer. xli, 5, there is mention of men from 

 Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria, who were bringing offerings and 

 incense to the House of the Lord ; this was after the fall of 

 Jerusalem. There are other passages in Jeremiah that seem to 

 have little meaning unless there were still a remnant of the 

 Ephraimite Tribes, whom the prophet thus represents as 



* I do not think that evidence from Chronicles is to be dismissed on 

 the plea that the book is non-historical. At all events it is clear that at 

 the time when the chronicler wrote it was believed that a very consider- 

 able number of the Ephraimites had escaped from the hands of the 

 Assyrians. 



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