The imports found a ready spot for their idols: “the high places which the Samaritans had made” (2 Ki 17:29)!
During the rule of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC), Israel fell under the control of Assyria c 733 BC. By 722, during the reign of his son, Shalmaneser V (726-722 BC), Israel as a nation ceased to exist. It seems that Shalmaneser knew at the end of Israel’s tenure in the land what Balaam knew at the beginning. The way to destroy a nation is to destroy its families; the way to destroy its families is to destroy its men; and the way to destroy its men is to destroy its marriages. Assyria’s king not only took the nation’s best off to his home country, but “brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel” (2 Ki 17:24). The intention was through intermarriage to diminish the local customs, weaken their national identity, and assimilate them into a new pagan milieu. But Assyria failed to understand one thing. The God of the Jews wouldn’t abandon the land of His choosing. “At the beginning of their dwelling there,…they did not fear the Lord; therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them” (v 25). The Lord wasn’t like their idols who could be trundled off in the back of a cart. Ironically, the Israelites were transferred to Assyria because they hadn’t taken God seriously. What would these immigrants do? “Send there one of the priests whom you brought from there; let him go and dwell there, and let him teach them the rituals of the God of the land” (v 27). The experiment failed miserably. In classic syncretism, “They feared the Lord, yet served their own gods” (v 33). This is the sad heritage of the Samaritans: “their children and their children’s children have continued doing as their fathers did, even to this day” (v 41).