Amos 7:8-13 “And the Lord said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said: "Behold, I am setting a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel; I will not pass by them anymore. (9) The high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste. I will rise with the sword against the house of Jeroboam." (10) Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. (11) For thus Amos has said: 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive from their own land.' “(12) Then Amaziah said to Amos: "Go, you seer! Flee to the land of Judah. There eat bread, and there prophesy. (13) But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is the royal residence."
The next key event that we will discuss is Israel’s exile and its loss of sovereignty. In a similar manner to King Solomon, King Jeroboam initially governed the nation of Israel in a manner that was pleasing to the Lord, but as time progressed his governance became more and more depraved, and eventually, he too led Israel away from following the Lord. And so the Lord sent His prophets to Israel to warn them of the consequences of their actions, i.e. God would forcefully expel them from the Promised Land unless they repented of their wicked ways. The above-quoted passage of scripture is a record of the warning that the Lord gave Israel through His prophet Amos, in which He specifically stated that Israel would be led away captive from their land unless they repented. The recorded warning in this passage, which was delivered in approximately the year 925 BC[1], was only one of many that the Lord gave Israel, over the next two hundred years. Most of Jeroboam's successors followed in his footsteps, however, i.e. they ignored the Lord's warnings and continued to lead Israel away from the Lord.
2 Kings 10:28-33 “Thus Jehu destroyed Baal from Israel. (29) However Jehu did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin, that is, from the golden calves that were at Bethel and Dan. (30) And the Lord said to Jehu, "Because you have done well in doing what is right in My sight, and have done to the house of Ahab all that was in My heart, your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation." (31) But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart; for he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin. (32) In those days the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel; and Hazael conquered them in all the territory of Israel (33) from the Jordan eastward: all the land of Gilead--Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh--from Aroer, which is by the River Arnon, including Gilead and Bashan.”
Because of Israel’s persistent ignoring of the Lord’s warnings, He eventually started to inflict His judgements upon them. We see the consequence of those judgements in the above-quoted passage of scripture, for this passage declares that the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel. In other words, this is an account of Israel’s first loss of territory since they had inherited their Promised Land. This event took place in approximately the year 841 BC[2]. In this account, we see that during King Jehu's reign over Israel, King Hazael of Syria conquered all of Israel's territory from the Jordan eastward, i.e. all the land of Gilead. And so we see that the tribes of Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh were the first to forfeit their inheritance in the Promised Land.
2 Kings 17:6-23 “In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. (7) For so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and they had feared other gods, (8) and had walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. … (20) And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel, afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of plunderers, until He had cast them from His sight. (21) For He tore Israel from the house of David, and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. Then Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord, and made them commit a great sin. (22) For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them, (23) until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, as it is to this day.”
As we have already mentioned, the Lord sent His prophets to Israel over two hundred years, to warn them of the consequences of their wicked ways. Nevertheless, Israel refused to listen, and so God finally judged them for their continued disobedience. It is interesting to note in the above-quoted passage of scripture, that one of the reasons given why the Lord judged Israel, was because “Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord, and made them commit a great sin. For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them." The great sin referred to in this passage was Jeroboam's setting up of two golden calves for Israel to worship as their gods (1 Kings 12:25-33). And so when the Lord passed final judgment on Israel, He delivered them into the hands of the Assyrians, who forcefully expelled Israel from their Promised Land and carried them away into Assyria, i.e. into exile. The above-quoted passage of scripture is a record of that event, which occurred in approximately the year 722 BC[3]. Many bible scholars have falsely assumed that Israel's total population was taken into exile at that time, but that is not correct. We know that, because after 722 BC, various kings of Judah continued to interact with the ten tribes in the northern kingdom. For example, in 715 BC, King Hezekiah of Judah invited the remnant of the Jews of the northern kingdom to join Judah in celebrating the Passover Feast in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 30)[4]. Another example is that in 621 BC, King Josiah of Judah went throughout the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel to destroy the Baal altars that the Jews had erected in both kingdoms (2 Chronicles 34:1-7)[5]. And so the question is asked, what happened to Israel’s population in the year 722 BC? To answer that question we can look at the example of Judah's exile, which would take place approximately 124 years later (we will discuss Judah’s exile in the following section). When we examine Judah’s exile, we see that it was only a small percentage of the total population that were taken into exile, i.e. mainly the Jewish elite. And so it is more than probable that something similar happened with Israel's exile; only a small percentage of the total population was taken into exile, i.e. mainly the Jewish elite, which some historians estimate to have been approximately 60,000[6]. Israel's total population at that time is estimated to have been 450,000. And so we see that approximately 13% of the northern kingdom's population was taken into exile, which means that the bulk of the northern kingdom Jews remained in Israel. There is no evidence that Israel's exiles ever returned however, so it is more than likely that they eventually became part of the Jewish dispersion (John 7:35). Nevertheless, even though most of the Jews remained in the northern kingdom, they no longer governed their affairs because from that point on they fell under the governorship of the various nations that conquered them. In other words from the year 722 BC, the ten tribes of Israel ceased to exist as a sovereign nation.
Michael E.B. Maher
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