Remember Pekah? He was the king who, well, didn’t exactly get to savor his victories. Because right after he came to power, the king of Assyria swooped in and, as Ginzberg tells us in Legends of the Jews, captured the golden calf at Dan. Yes, the golden calf, or rather, one of them. And he didn’t stop there. He exiled the tribes living on the east side of the Jordan River. The kingdom was starting to crumble, piece by piece.
And it kept going. For years, the Assyrians chipped away at Israel. Then, during the reign of Hoshea, they grabbed the other golden calf – the one that hadn’t already been snatched! Along with it went the tribes of Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, and Naphtali. Can you imagine? Only one-eighth of the Israelites were left in their homeland, according to the account in Legends of the Jews. The rest? They were carted off, many to Damascus.
It felt like a runaway train, didn't it? And here's a twist: the last ruler of Israel, Hoshea himself, might have actually sped things up, and…by doing something that seems almost…good.
After the Assyrians made off with the golden calves (yes, both of them!), Hoshea decided to remove the guards stationed on the border between Judah and Israel. These guards had been there to stop people from making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Hoshea, in a moment of perhaps misplaced piety, wanted to let people worship freely.
But here’s the kicker: nobody took advantage of it! The people, it seems, were too stuck in their idolatrous ways. Ginzberg suggests that as long as their kings had stood in their way, they had an excuse for not worshipping God properly. But now? Now they had no excuse.
So, when the Assyrians launched their third and final incursion into Israel, it was the end. Kaput. The Kingdom of the North was destroyed, and everyone left was exiled. All of them. It's a pretty stark warning, isn't it? A reminder that sometimes, even good intentions can pave the road to…well, you know. It makes you wonder about the choices we make, and whether we truly take advantage of the opportunities we're given.