Week 18 2 Kings 15
The northern kingdom of Israel didn’t just suddenly disappear. It’s more like it did a long and slow swansong fading to a whisper. Then gone.
I was reminded of that today in my reading: during (Pekah’s) reign King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria attacked Israel again, and he captured the towns of Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, and Hazor. He also conquered the regions of Gilead, Galilee, and Naphtali, and he took the people to Assyria as captives. I checked a not-too-detailed map and found two of the cities – Kedesh & Hazor. I also spotted the region of Galilee and the tribal territory of Naphtali. All of them are in the geographic north of the northern kingdom.
The territorial losses reminded me of something I read a couple of days ago: at about that time the Lord began to reduce the size of Israel’s territory. King Hazael conquered several sections of the country east of the Jordan River, including all of Gilead, Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh. I checked another map that was not-too-detailed but it was detailed enough for me to see that a huge central chunk of Israel east of the Jordan was lost during that time.
There’s maybe fifty or sixty years between the Jordan East losses to Hazael and the Israel North losses to Tiglath-pileser. Israel is slowly sinking in the international sunset. Slowly but surely.
I also read chapter 17 today. Good-bye Israel.
Note: quotes from 2 Kings 15:29 & 10:32-33 (NLT)