364 The Samaritans and the 
the descendants of ten tribes. Some contend that the — 
language of Scripture (2 Kings xvii. 24), hardly admits of 
a doubt that the whole Jewish population was rooted out 
of Samaria, and replaced by settlers, who were Assyrians 
by birth or subjugation. The scripture chronicle tells of 
the country having been infested with lions, which, it should 
seem, the superstition of the times attributed to the ignor- 
ance of the new settlers respecting “the manner of the God 
of the land.” “Had any of the old inhabitants been left,” 
says Dr. Hessey, “it would have been impossible for the 
new settlers to have been so entirely unable to acquaint 
themselves with the manner of the God of the land.” 
Now it does not seem to us that this objection goes for 
much in the face of what is recorded of the settled purpose 
of the Kings of Israel to supersede the national religion of 
Mosaism by the idolatrous worship of Baal and other 
Phenician Deities. Jeroboam, the first King, set up calves 
for worship in Bethel and Dan; Abijah, Jehu, and Ahab, 
went from bad to worse; and abundant evidence is afforded 
in the Bible that both priest and layman had wandered 
far away from the worship of Jehovah, long before the 
conquest of Samaria was accomplished by Shalmanessar. 
Besides which, it is no easy matter to root out the popu- 
lation of a whole kingdom within the space of a few 
months. Extermination is a work of slow progress; and 
we are not deficient of proofs, in our own times, where the 
appliances of destruction and of deportation are greater 
than they could have been 720 B.c., that it requires many 
years, if indeed, the object can ever be effectually brought 
about, to exterminate a large aboriginal population. But 
what we rely upon most in support of the view we venture 
to uphold is, an occurrence which the Bible sets down at a 
date more than a hundred years after the conquest of 
Samaria. Jeremiah, who prophesied about 620 B.C., speaks 
of Israelites who had come from Shechem, Shiloh, and 
Samaria, to bring offerings to the Temple at Jerusalem—a 
sufficient proof that as late as his time there were Hebrews 
in Samaria. Again, a record is preserved in 2 Chron. 
xxxiv., 9, to the effect, that in the reign of Josiah, contri- 
butions to the Temple were collected “by the hand of 
Manassah, Ephraim, and a// the remnant of Israel. 
Assuming, then, that the population of that part of 
Palestine which once described the kingdom of Samaria, 
contained within it, after its conquest, an element of its 
original Hebrew settlers, we pass over an interval of 180 
