The Assyrians and Babylonians Who Captured and Exported The Jewish People

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are in Mesopotamia, important to our Jewish history because the city of Ur is at the end of the Euphrates which is the city that Abraham was from.  We were originally Mesopotamians because of this. 

They are in the fertile crescent.  The Fertile Crescent runs from the Taurus Mountains in the north to the Arabian Desert in the south, and from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Zagros Mountains. Ancient Mesopotamia is located within the Fertile Crescent, but the Crescent covers more geography than ancient Mesopotamia. Today, the Crescent includes such countries as Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, as well as the Sinai Peninsula and northern Mesopotamia, Turkey and Iran.   The fertile crescent is drained by the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Some even include Egypt.   

It was here in pre-historic times  that hunters first began to gather in and eat the seeds of wild grasses.  They depended on the migrating herds of antelope that criss-crossed the grasslands on their seasonal migrations, but the seeds were plentiful and easy to collect.  -a gathering of the wild harvest even before agriculture began.

                 Ur Ziggurat :  A Neo-Sumerian ziggurat in what was the city of Ur near Nasiriyah, in present-day Dhi Qar Province, Iraq. The structure was built during the Early Bronze Age but had crumbled to ruins by the 6th century BCE of the Neo-Babylonian period, when it was restored by King Nabonidus.

Its remains were excavated in the 1920s and 1930s by Sir Leonard Woolley. Under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, they were encased by a partial reconstruction of the façade and the monumental staircase. The Ziggurat of Ur is the best-preserved of those known from Mesopotamia, besides the ziggurat of Dur Untash (Chogha Zanbil). It is one of three well-preserved structures of the Neo-Sumerian city of Ur, along with the Royal Mausolea and the Palace of Ur-Nammu (the E-hursag). One of his most dramatic discoveries, royal tombs dating from about 2700 BC, disclosed the practice of the sacrificial burial of a deceased king’s personal retinue. With the help of contributors, he began publishing a projected 10 volumes of Ur Excavations in 1927. His other books include The Sumerians (1928), Ur of the Chaldees (1929), and Digging up the Past (1930).                                                             

 

        An Ur Ziggurat  when Abraham lived there:  The ziggurat was a piece in a temple complex that served as an administrative center for the city, and which was a shrine of the moon god Nanna, the patron deity of Ur.  The construction of the ziggurat was finished in the 21st century BCE by King Shulgi who existed way before Abraham (1948 BCE) , who, in order to win the allegiance of cities, proclaimed himself a god. During his 48-year reign, the city of Ur grew to be the capital of a state controlling much of Mesopotamia. Many ziggurats were made by stacking mud-bricks up and using mud to seal them together. 

At the beginning of the two rivers, actually the Tigris,  lay Assyria which was inhabited by the people who attacked Samaria, the northern half of Israel in 721 BCE and carried away 27,290 of the best part of the population.  

It had been the House of Shalmaneser III and his subsequent heirs of the Assyrians who had been of this aggressive kingdom since the 20th century BCE.  They had been victorious from the 13th to 10th centuries when our kings David and Solomon fought against the Aramean states in Mesopotamia and Syria.  

             Battle between the Sumerians (left) and the Semites led by Sargon (king of Assyria from 721 to 712 BCE), armed with bows and arrows (20th century depiction).  Sumeria was a region of S. Babylonia named after a non-Semitic people which migrated there in prehistoric times and founded a series of city states.  Its culture was the basis of Babylonian civilization and influenced the Semitic people of Akkad to their nation.  Nimrod and Cush are connected with Sumerian tradition.  

Samaria was the land of Israel.  Originally, it was only the city-the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, founded by King Omri (887-876 BCE) on a hill bought from Shemer (I Kings 16:24)  It was 7 mi. NW of Shechem (Nablus) made up of 25 acres.  Samaria withstood the siege of the Syrians but fell in 721 BCE to Sargon II of Assyria who resettled it with Cutheans who mixed in with remnants of former population left there.  

 These people were idol-worshipers, and it was said that  G‑d sent lions to decimate them, as they hadn't seen lions before and had  great fear of them, as I would have had.. Out of fear of the lions, the Cutheans converted to Judaism, but the rabbis of the Talmud debated whether their conversion was valid or not. The Cutheans’ Torah observance was spotty — extremely strong in some areas, but very weak or nonexistent in others.All then became ancestors of the Samaritans.  

The name, SAMARIA,  is now applied to  the entire northern region instead of ISRAEL, of central highlands of the land which the Romans had then renamed as Palestine and since 1948 is again Israel.                                   

King Hoshea of Israel (last ruler of Israel, (reigned from 732-724 BCE) in 726 BCE tried to throw off the yoke  led to Shalmaneser V's siege of Samaria and its capture in 721BCE by his successor, Sargon.  Assyrian records say he had Assyrian help in becoming king. and his kingdom was confined to the surroundings of Mt. Ephraim.  But, he finally rebelled against Assyria and was imprisoned by Shalmaneser who then beseiged and captured Samaria (Kings 17:1-6).  Sargon annexed the country of its people to Assyria and Media and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.  Did either Sargon or Shalmaneser realize that the people they attacked had once been from their own river complex of Ur?  Did they seem to look familiar to them at all?  For the Israelites, Assyrians were a people they had left, escaped from to live a freer life in Canaan.                     

Babylonia was a large city half-way down the Euphrates River.  Babylonia will take the Assyrians later and own the whole river complex.  Babylonia was known in the Bible as the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees)--Ur of the Chaldees.  Genesis tells us it was the cradle of humanity and the scene of man's first revolt against G-d which was the tower of Babel. 

 Abraham had fought against Amraphel, king of Shinar as told in Genesis 14.  He was one of 5 kings who united to attack the rulers of Sodom and were defeated by Abraham.    Amraphel is identified with the great Babylonian lawgiver, Hammurabi by only a few today.    Our prophets thought that Babylonia was a symbol of insolent pagan tyranny.  

 The Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire was the last war fought by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, between 626 and 609 BCE.

The Babylonian, Nebuchadnezzar II (604-561 BCE) inherited the Assyrian Empire.  He conquered Judah, the southern part of Israel in 597 and 586 BCE.  He also exiled many Jews to Babylon.  The question is if they joined the previous 10 tribes of Jacob from the Assyrian exile?  That would give Mesopotamia a lot of Jewish people.                                     

Cyrus, king of Persia, had allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem and re-build the Temple, but many Jews decided to stay there, especially the younger ones who had never been in Jerusalem.  Actually, Jews had been away from Jerusalem for the past 70 years.  

Ancient Mesopotamia was mostly in the same area as modern day Iraq, positioned between two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.  The word Mesopotamia is Greek meaning "the land between the rivers".  Ancient Mesopotamia included an area that was about 300 miles long and about 150 miles wide. These rivers flow into the Persian Gulf.  The land was very fertile.  In the Northern part of Mesopotamia, rivers and streams were fed from the mountains.  In addition, there was a rainy season that helped water the soil.  While the southern region was much hotter and dryer, the two large rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, allowed for irrigation.  The land between the rivers was filled with wildlife and edible vegetation. People who wandered into the area discovered they could plant crops and store food to add to the natural food supply. With the discovery of agriculture, people began to settle down, and build homes and then villages and then towns and then cities.  People developed new inventions to take advantage of the geography, inventions like the first sailboat, the wheel, and the first plow.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medo-Babylonian_conquest_of_the_Assyrian_Empire#:~:text=The%20Medo%2DBabylonian%20conquest%20of,between%20626%20and%20609%20BC.

https://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/geography.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great

Book:  The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes, p. 135

https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/fertile-crescent-explained#:~:text=The%20Fertile%20Crescent%2C%20often%20referred,%2C%20for%20some%20scholars%2C%20Egypt.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonard-Woolley

A Transplanted People: Ancient Northern Israelites

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

    The attack of King Sargon II of Assyria on the Northern 10 tribes of Israelites-721 BCE

It was the practice in ancient days of getting rid of an undesirable population and exchanging them with  one with better possibilities.  So was the thinking of the Assyrians in 721 BCE.  They had attacked the northern 10 tribes of the Israelite empire and had taken the young and virile population away who could bear up on the trek back to Assyria.  They most likely left the older population who were past the age of child bearing and who would never hold up on such a distance.   Then they brought deportees from other conquered territories to Samaria to take their place. Excavations at Tel Hadid, near Lod in Israel, have unearthed material remains that contribute to our understanding of these transformative years.    So for almost 200 years, Samaria was populated by foreigners exported by the Assyrians.                       

                               743 BCE Urartu: Since the beginning of history the Anatolian Peninsula has been the home of ancient civilizations .Hittites, Urartus, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljukides and Ottomans left precious remains in recent Turkey. Ancient waterworks are distributed all over the Anatolian Peninsula making it and neighbouring countries an open-air museum with respect to.water history.  

    They could have been the neighboring kingdoms like Urartu and Elam who were often making incursions into Assyrian territory, a professional army was also required for national defense.  That would be good reason to rid themselves of this people and exchange them for the Israelites.  Elam was an ancient state east of Babylonia, the modern Khuzistan:  capital : Susa, the Shushan of the book of Esther.  The Elamites, as several other non-Semitic peoples, are classed by the Bible as children of Shem.  They had been defeated by Abraham.    Urartu was an early first millennium BC kingdom located in the Armenian highlands. Thanks to its animosity with Assyria, it had a militaristic society and is thought to be the first kingdom to convert from bronze to iron weaponry leading Assyria to quickly follow suit.  The Palestinians of Samaria could be the descendants of such people.                                                         

The Northern tribes had broken away from Judea and Benjamin by virtue of geography;  they were further away from Jerusalem, their center of religious affairs.  Israel was more into business, making money, dealing with other countries than the south was.  They became competitors with the south, creating their own religious center and using some of the Cohens in their tribes to officiate in these new centers.

 It was Assyria's King Shalmaneser V's siege of Samaria and its capture in 721 BCE by Sargon, his successor who were the kidnappers of the Israelites.                                                                            

Sargon seized the throne on the death of Shalmaneser III during the siege of Samaria (northern Israel)  which he brought to a successful conclusion, exiling many of the people.  In 720 BCE, the next year,  he defeated a military alliances which included the remnants of the Israelites of Samaria. He was assassinated and was succeeded by Sennacherib.    

The House of Shalmaneser had fought against an alliance of Damascus, Hamath, and Israel headed by King Ahab of Israel, son of Omri (876-853 BCE) husband of Jezebel, daughter of the king of Sidon.  It was she who had introduced the worship of Baal into Israel, a real no no.  The Shalmaneser kings were against other peoples at Karkar in Syria in 854 and 853 BCE earlier, but had returned home unsuccessful.  Shalmaneser tried again later and this time ravaged the territory of Hamatha, and on his own testimony, received tribute from King Jehu of Israel (842-814 BCE). 

                                        Jehu being anointed as King of Israel 

It was Jehu who killed the royal family including the queen-mother , Jezebel as well as the priests of Baal.  

                                                   

    (the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser shows Jehu paying tribute)

However, he was unsuccessful in his wars with Aram (Syria) and paid tribute to Shalmanaeser III of Assyria to get his protection.  On repelling the Assyrian threat, Hazael of Aram (Syria) deprived Jehu of much of his territory.  The dynasty of Jehu continued to reign for the next 100 years.  

 The next Shalmaneser IV reigned from 728 to 722 BCE and fought against Sidon, Tyre, and Acre. 

 King Hoshea,(732-724 BCE) last king of Israel, revolted against Shalmaneser but fell into his hands. He had become king with Assyrian help, too. His kingdom had been a small one, confined to the surroundings of Mt. Ephraim.  Finally he had reached the boiling point with Assyria and had rebelled and was then put in prison by Shalmaneser who then besieged and captured Samaria.   

 Shalmaneser V died during the siege of Samaria.   

Hosea, a prophet of Israel in 726 BCE threw off the yoke of Israel's exile but comforted it with visions of restoration after the people's repentance.  The way he saw their defection from southern Israel and their more serious observances of the Mosaic law was compared to a wife's marital unfaithfulness.                                 

 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon of the land of Shinar, also known as the Kasdim (Chaldees) was the next king and conquered Judah.  

Babylon was the land that Abraham and his father, Terah, had left.  They had been living in Ur of the Chaldees, a little south of Babylon.  This king had inherited the Assyrian Empire, and from 605 to 562 BCE had conquered all the lands from the Euphrates River to the Egyptian frontier, including Judah.   In 597 BCE, after Judah revolted, he dispatched contingents which captured Jerusalem, replaced the young king Jehoiachin with his own nominee, Zedekiah, and exiled 8,000 of the local aristocracy to Babylon. They would return in 586 BCE.   

The Judeans of Babylon were able to remain in contact with the Judeans of Jerusalem and even supplied some of their leaders such as Hillel.   Babylonia had overwhelmed this remaining Judean population with their large army.                 

                        King Cyrus II who died in 529 BCE

The Israelites would return to Jerusalem in 538 BCE, in fact sent back by the king Cyrus of Persia, who overran the Babylonian empire, which included Judah  and rebuilt their Temple which Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed.  The total years of exile were about 70 years.  The Judeans were so grateful that they thought of Cyrus as a Divine agent. 

                                           

    There had been Israelites who were not exiled that had remained in Judah.  They had been under the rule of Gedaliah.  The story of Gedaliah represents a major turning point in our nation’s history.   If we dig a bit deeper, we may discover another very well known story lurking just beneath the surface, that carries a critical and much needed message for our day and age.  Gedalia had been the appointed governor of Judah by the Babylonians and was of a noble Jewish family.                                          

He had set up his office in Mizpah but soon was murdered by the commander, Ishmael ben Nethaniah and his followers who were apparently planning a revolt against Babylon in concert with the neighboring powers.  After the murder, Gedaliah's supporters fled to Egypt.  Ishmael was a military officer and now murderer, so he fled to Baalis, king of the Ammonites, who had for political reasons incited him to kill Gedaliah.  After the murder, Ishmael endeavored to take the remnants of the Jewish community to Ammon, but was prevented by Jonathan ben Kareah. (Jer . 40-1).  Before him, as the representative of the government, appeared the Israelitish generals Ishmael b. Nethaniah, Johanan and Jonathan, the sons of Kareah, and others.

A fast is held on the day after his assassination which destroyed any hope of holding their particular Jewish community together in Judah after the Babylonian conquest.  

The deportees taken to Mesopotamia (Babylon) were mostly peasants and craftsmen.  They had kept their religious identity.  When they returned, they were met by descendants of their own past people plus newcomers not familiar with their ways at all.  However, 70 years had past.  

Resource:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13552578/

https://www.worldhistory.org/Assyrian_Warfare/

https://www.alephbeta.org/playlist/hidden-meaning-behind-tzom-gedaliah

https://www.thetorah.com/article/assyrian-deportation-and-resettlement-the-story-of-samaria

721 BCE: Israel and Judah's kings and All the Juicy Facts About Them

Nadene Goldfoot                                  

The Enemy: first Assyria, later Babylonia who inherited Assyria's land 

 

                            ISRAEL'S KING HOSHEA

  son of Elah (not the king Elah b:888BCE-someone named for him)

The kingdom of Israel was attacked in 721 BCE by the Assyrians and almost 3,000 of the best of the people were captured and taken away by them as prisoners.    King Hoshea was the king of Israel at that time.  He had been ruling since 730 BCE, and his 9 year reign would end with this conquest in 721 BCE.  He had become king with Assyria's help said Assyrian sources.  His kingdom at the time was confined to Mt. Ephraim.  Then he rebelled against Assyria and was put in prison by the King of Assyria, Shalmaneser (a dynasty that ruled from 860-825 BCE;  till 721 BCE) , when he besieged and captured Israel;  which was then called Samaria.                                        

Assyrians leading away the Israelites 

                                                  

King Pekah  was king of Israel from 735 to 730 BCE. He was a captain in the army of king Pekahiah from 736-735 BCE of Israel, whom he killed to become king. Pekah was the son of Remaliah, a captain in the army.

He had been overly ambitious in his desire to become king and so he had knocked off the king preceding him, Pekahiah, who ruled from only 736 to 735 BCE.     Pekah may have even been of Gileadite origin.  He was described as an evil king, as he continued the worship of false idols that had been started by Jeroboam 1.
                                                      

Pekahiah was a king of Israel and the son of King Menahem743-736 BCE, whom he succeeded, and the second and last king of Israel from the House of Gadi. He ruled from the capital of Samaria. 

  Pekah had murdered Pekahiah after a conspiracy and had seized his throne.  

Then he had allied himself with Rezin of Aram-Dammesek (Syria).  They attacked Judah, but their initial success led Ahaz of Judah to appeal for help to Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria who ruled from 745 to 726 BCE.   This is all related in II Kings 17: 1-6 of the Tanakh (Old Testament).  Tiglath-Pileser reformed Assyrian administration and introduced the policy of exiling hostile people of conquered countries. 
                                                          

 In 743 BCE he invaded northern Syria and levied tribute on King Menahem of Israel who had just started his reign which would end in 736 BCE.  Menahem or Menachem was a king of the northern Israelite Kingdom of Israel. He was the son of Gadi, and the founder of the dynasty known as the House of Gadi or House of Menahem
                                                   

                         The Cohens of the tribe of Levi served in the Temple,

but the rest were to live with different families in Israel, so that would mean there were Levites living in all the tribes at the time of the kingdom's division.

They were the teachers of the Israelites.  

Tiglath-Pileser decided that to help, he would invade the allied kingdom, abolish Aram-Dammesek as a state, and stripped Israel of the Galilee and Gilead.  King Hoshea was later put in prison by Shalmaneser of Assyria who ruled from 860 to 825 BCE.  Shalmaneser died during the siege of Samaria.  
                                                            

                                     JUDAH'S KING HEZEKIAH
                                       Ruled Judah from 720 BCE to 692 BCE
                                       Son of King Ahaz, aimed at breaking the country's dependence on Assyria.  To do this he freed religious worship from Assyrian influence, purged the palace and Temple of images and pagan altars, and renewed the pure monotheistic religion.  Isaiah, the Prophet supported him as did other prophets.  He allied himself with neighboring rulers, fortified Jerusalem, and constructed the Siloam Tunnel to improve its water-supply.  In 712 BCE he joined the neighboring states in their uprising against Assyria.  Sargon II captured Philistine cities,didn't enter Judah, Edom or Moab.  

The Kingdom of Judah, the southern part of Israel before King Solomon had died in 920 BCE, was being ruled by King Ahaz in 721 BCE. His reign would end the next year when Hezekiah would take over and rule until 692 BCE. 
                                                                       

  Ahaz had been the son of King Jotham, who had been the previous king, ruling from 735 to 720 BCE.  Jotham's father, Uzziah, had fallen sick with leprosy.  He fought and defeated the Ammonites and resisted the pressure of the king of Aram to join an anti-Assyrian alliance.                                  

Ahaz was 20 when he became king of Judah (735-720 BCE)  and reigned for 16 years. Ahaz is portrayed as an evil king in the Second Book of Kings (2 Kings 16:2). Edwin R. Thiele concluded that Ahaz was co-regent with Jotham from 736/735 BC, and that his sole reign began in 732/731 and ended in 716/715 BC.

   

 His kingdom was attacked by Israel and Syria, while at the same time the Edomites and Philistines attacked his southern territory.  Ahaz went against the advice of the prophet Isaiah and asked for help from Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria who had then invaded Syria and Israel in 733 BCE.  Judah, because of asking Assyria for help, became an Assyrian vassal and was also subjected by Assyria to Assyrian idolatry.  When a country took over another, they forced their religion on the people. 

References: 
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pekah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshea
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Ancient History of Israel and Judah Fighting Assyrian Empire: Today's Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                 

Assyria encompassed parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria

Assyria expanded by the 13th and 10th centuries BCE.  

The kingdom started in northern Mesopotamia and covered 4 of today's countries. 

 It went from Syria west to the Euphrates River. 

 From Turkey it went north to Harran, Edessa, Diyarbakir and Lake Van.  

From Iran it went east to Lake Urmi.

In Iraq it went 100 miles south of Kirkuk.  

                                                                       

                                      Empire of Assyria

Abraham, father of 2 peoples, the Arabs and the Jews, lived in the 2nd millennium BCE.  Assyria, an aggressive kingdom,  was born in Western Asia in the 20th century BCE.   Joseph, son of Abraham, lived in about 1700 BCE, to give one an idea of what it was like back then.  The date would be 3,800 years ago.

Kings Saul born in 11th century BCE in the tribe of Benjamin,  David, (1,000-960 BCE) of the tribe of Judah  and his son, King Solomon were kings of Israel.  When King Solomon died (961-920 BCE) the kingdom of Israel split in half with the southern part becoming Judah, as the tribe of Judah lived there.  The kingdom of Israel continued with Jeroboam I as king (930-910 BCE).  He was of the tribe of Ephraim.  His first capital was at Shechem and later at Penuel in Jordan and finally at Tirzah, the final capital of Samaria before the time of King Omri (887-876 BCE of Israel.   He set up new shrines at Bethel and Dan  since he didn't have Jerusalem.  It went with Judah.  The shrines centered around the symbols of golden calves.  Jews feel he had sinned with this and caused Israel to sin.

 Dan was captured by Ben Hadad of Syria during the rule of King Baasha of Israel, son of Ahijah (908-885  BCE)  Ben Hadad was the name of 3 kings of Aram-Dammasek and reigned from 908 to 886 BCE.  He was an ally of King Baasha of Israel until bribed by King Asa of Judah (915-875 BCE) to attack the northern kingdom .  He declared war on Israel (856 BCE) but was defeated and captured.  Then he was freed by King Ahab of Israel (876-853 BCE)  and they became allies in the war against Shalmaneser III of Assyria in 853 BCE.  Later he defeated Ahab at Ramoth Gilead.  He was defeated 3 times by King  Jehoash of Israel (800-785 BCE)  who recaptured the towns that had been ceded to Aram II.
                                                                       

In 853 BCE Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria,  attacked Ben-Hadad II of Damascus.  King Ahab (876-853 BCE) of Israel supported his neighbor in Damasus in the battle of Karkar against Shalmaneser.   So Shalmaneser, not having won that battle, attacked again in 848 BCE and lost again.  The House of King Ahab was liquidated in 842 BCE.  Israel then had Ahaziah (853 BCE), and Jehoram (853-843 BCE) as kings.  Next was King Jehu (843-816 BCE)   who now sat on the throne of Israel and he had to pay tribute to Shalmaneser who reigned from 860-825 BCE.  Damascus held out till 841 BCE but then was captured in 806 BCE  which freed Israel from Damascus control.  Shalmaneser fought against Sidon and Tyre, Phoenician cities now in Lebanon,  and Acre, now a city in Israel.

In 803-802 BCE, Adad-Nirari III (810-783 BCE)  caused the submission of Ben-Hadad III of Damascus.  In Israel, King Jehoash (800-785 BCE)  was successful and his son Jeroboam II (785-745 BCE)  fought against Ben-Hadad III  because at the time Shalmaneser IV (782-772 BCE) was rather passive since he was under the pressure of the kings of Ararat and of Ashur-Dan III (772-759 BCE).  The king of Israel, Jeroboam II died in 745 BCE and King Uzziah  of Judah (780-740 BCE) became head of the Western anti-Assyrian alliance.   He became king at age 16 and conquered Philistia and defeated the Arabians and Meunites tko the south of his kingdom.  He also headed a league of kings who opposed Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria.  Uzziah rebuilt the Red Sea port of Eleath, and under his reign Judah reached the zenith  of its development.  When very old he suffered from leprosy so handed his crown to his son Jotham.

Israel then had kings Zechariah in 744 BCE, Shallum in 743 BCE, Menahem  (743-736 BCE), Pekahiah (736-735 BCE), Pekah (735-730 BCE) and the their last king, Hoshea (730-721 BCE).  Hoshea had revolted against Shalmaneser, but fell into his hands.  Shalmaneser died during the siege of Samaria, which was the capital of Israel.   The battle ended with the Assyrians taking the best of the population of Israel as captives and led them back to their land.

  The 13th king after Jeroboam I was Jeroboam II (784-744 BCE) who exploited Aram's weakness after the defeat by Assyria by recapturing all the and detached from Israel and annexing Aramean towns. Aram was another tribe with a common ancestry of the Israelites.  Assyria had been threatened by Aramean tribes, and only at the end of the 10th century did she finally succeed in averting the danger.  The Aramean states in Syria were overthrown in 743-42 BCE and turned into Assyrian dependencies.  Rebellions were punished by the deportation of the inhabitants to distant countries.  The principal Aramean god in Syria was Hadad, god of wind, rain, thunder and lightning.   Jeroboam II's  rule was full of corruption and the pursuit of pleasure and profit.  This sounds like any country existing today.  The prophets Hosea and Amos denounced his rule.                                                            

Assyria attacked  Israel  in 721 BCE and throughout 722 BCE captured the best of the population and took them away to their land as captives.   Israel's king at the time was King Hoshea (730-721 BCE) 

 This came about due to the nearness of these empires and their combativeness.  Everyone attacked other groups in those days.  Things haven't changed much.  Here's the situation back then.  I"ll lead you to the attack.  Assyria took away 10 of the 12 original tribes of Israelites were taken as captives.  from 721 to 715 BCE.  

At this same time, the southern kingdom, Judah, was ruled by King Hezekiah, a good king.  They were  attacked by the Assyrians later on  but were stopped at the walls of Jerusalem in 701 BCE.  Judah had come into being in 933 BCE after the death of King Solomon.  It preserved monotheistic Judaism in a purer form than Israel had.  They were ruled continually by the House of David.

The Assyrian land was rich and fertile.  Every region had fields where they grew food.  The Arbel plain and the Nineveh plain were the Assyrian breadbasket and are producing food to this day.  It could feed a large population full of professionals and craftsmen which helped their empire to expand and advance the art of civilization-that is, up until today.
                                                                 

 The religion of the Assyrians was Ashurism.  Their god was Asshur, and he was the king of all their gods. The Assyrians believed they were their god's chosen people.   This was a polytheistic religion, just like the Babylonian religion.  Their gods were based around nature.  They had hundreds of gods.  Anu was god of heaven; Bel was god of land where people lived; Ea was god of water; Sin was god of the moon; Shamash was the sun god; and Ramman was god of storms.  The Assyrians were first to convert to Christianity, but many kept practicing Assurism until 256 CE.     The attack of Assyria upon Israel  happened  about 722 years before Jesus was born and 1,292 years before Mohammad was born.

125 years later, the Babylonians would attack Israel and Judah in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE and take away the best of the population.  Babylon was  south of today's Baghdad.  There was a stark geographical distinction between Babylonia and Assyria.  If one made a journey from Baghdad, Iraq which was in the area of ancient Babylonia to Mosul, Iraq, you would be near several old Assyrian capitals.  The area of Baghdad and southwards the vegetation is of palm trees on flat land.  Most of the year the land is arid and dead where water has not reached.  Near Mosul one sees a change.  The land is made up undulating plains and in spring it is green with pasturage or cereal crops, flowers and clover.  The rolling plains are cut with wadis, full of spring rains.  Higher ranges of hills are on the horizon.  This was Assyria; around Mosul.

Right now Mosul is in the hands of ISIS who has created a Caliphate.  Mosul was Iraq's 2nd largest city.  They have taken parts of eastern Syria and much of Iraq except for Baghdad.

Resource: http://samtemple.wordpress.com/religion/
http://www.aina.org/brief.html
http://www.atour.com/maps/
http://www.enduringword.com/commentaries/1218.htm
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-assyrians-who-carried-away-10.html

What Happened to Assyria and Babylonia? It's Today's Iraq

Nadene Goldfoot                                                         

Mosul, 2nd largest city in Iraq,  has fallen to ISIS who took it quite easily. It's 220 miles NW of Baghdad and lies on the bank of the Tigris River.   Next on the list is Baghdad, 40 miles away  from the ISIS marchers and after that is Jerusalem, 547 miles or 881 km from Baghdad.  .
                                                                           

                                      ISIS terrorist standing guard in Mosul

Jews had lived in Mosul, or rather Nineveh, its suburb, when Shalmaneser was king of Assyria in 730 BCE to 712 BCE.  He had conquered Samaria, capital of Israel but died in the siege.What he was after was tribute and  slaves to take.   In 1165 there were 7,000 Jews living there. Mosul had the largest Jewish community in Iraq in the 13th century.

In 1884 the population of Jews in and around Mosul was 3,807.   The Jewish  population had dwindled down to 1,100 in 1903 when the city's population was only 45,000.  The tombs of the prophets, Obadiah, Nahum and Jonah were in Mosul.  The population grew smaller from persecution and the population was reduced to peddling.  Occupations had been those of merchants, druggists, goldsmiths, weavers, farmers, shoemakers, and money-changers.

Babylonia or Shinar or Chaldea, all names that have become Iraq today.  Jews were taken as slaves there by Nebuchadnezzar  in 597 and again in 586 BCE

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylonia claimed victory over the Assyrian-Egyptian alliance at Carchemish in 605 BCE and conquered all the land from the Euphrates to the Egyptian frontier including Judah.

To the north of Mosul is the Jewish village, Bar Tanura.  It was populated by Jews who claimed that their ancestors had lived there since the return from Babylon.  Now Babylonia had attacked and taken Jews in 597 and again in 586 BCE. " The Jewish community of Babylon included Ezra the scribe, whose return to Judea in the late 6th century BCE  is associated with significant changes in Jewish ritual observance and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. TheTalmud was compiled in Babylonia, identified with modern Iraq."

 They were supporting themselves there by manual labor.  In 1893 they were pillaged by Kurds who lived in the mountains, people who happen to be the closest to Jews in their DNA.  Of course at this time they had no idea of their connection to each other.  The Kurds killed 2 Jews and wounded others.  The rest of the Jews ran to the other villages for protection and didn't return home until they were assured of protection from the Vali of Mosul.  They got this through a letter from Moses ha-Levi, chief rabbi of Turkey.  This was during the Ottoman Empire's last days.  Or has it?  At least in the Assyrian and Babylonian days, they took prisoners.  They didn't kill all the people.  

In 1948, Israel became a modern state.  At the time there were about 150,000 Jews in Iraq.  120,000  left in 1952 for Israel.  which was about 75% of the Jewish population.

Iraq had been first called Mesopotamia.  It became Iraq in 1921, created by the League of Nations with the British holding the mandate.  "Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi, (Arabic: فيصل بن حسين بن علي الهاشمي‎Fayṣal ibn Ḥusayn; 20 May 1885 – 8 September 1933) was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 1933. He was a member of the Hashemite dynasty." This was when the Ottoman Empire fell due to being on the Axis side of WWI.   It wasn't free of Britain until October 3, 1932.  It became a republic on July 14, 1958, just after May 14th when Israel was declared.  Iraq's population was recently at 36,004,552 but has since had many lives lost.

These were in the days before ISIS who is killing all before them who are in their path in their zeal to create a Muslim Caliphate today.  Strange how Islam has redirected its peaceful intent upon the world.

ISIS, now the world's richest terrorist group, has just seized Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons' stockpile.  Using it is another thing.  They can easily harm themselves by mishandling such weaponry.

Christians in Mosul who have fled to a monastary have been told they will not be harmed if they follow sharia law.  Today, the remaining Christians are made up of Assyrians and Syriacs, Armenians and Arabs, practicing variants of the Orthodox and Catholic faith, many worshipping in otherwise almost extinct languages such as Aramaic, or Assyrian itself.  

The front line with Isis in the north of Iraq is now 600 miles long. That is a long line for the Kurds and a few hundred Christian militiamen to hold.

Resource:  http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/06/20/tsr-dnt-damon-secret-isis-video.cnn.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/20/world/meast/iraq-recruiting-station/
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11495-new-nineveh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iraq
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10916613/Iraqs-beleaguered-Christians-make-final-stand-on-the-Mosul-frontline.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://njjewishnews.com/article/4770/the-taboo-history-of-the-jews-of-iraq#.U6X1g9JdU8o  loaded with more information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq