…to Samaria, …

An expansion of population, settlements and trade throughout the region known today as Palestine has been brought about by usually favorable climatic conditions in the first two centuries of Iron Age II.

In the central highlands, this results in unification in a kingdom with the city of Samaria, a few miles northwest of Shechem, as its capital.

King Omri, after conquering Moab, forms an alliance with the Phoenician city of Tyre and moves the capital of Israel to Samaria.(Omri, whose name appears frequently in Assyrian inscriptions, is mentioned briefly and unfavorably in I Kings 16 Micah 6:16 but is thought by modern scholars to have been one of the most important rulers of the northern kingdom.)

Ahab, who succeeds Omri as king of Israel, concludes an alliance with King Asa of Judah, ending the nearly half-century of warfare between the two nations.

Omri has reestablished Israel's economic and military significance among the Syrian and Palestinian minor kingdoms, so much so that years after his death the Assyrians will refer to the northern kingdom as “the land of Omri” He leaves to his son Ahab an empire that comprises not only territory east of the Jordan River, in Gilead and probably Bashan, but also the land of Moab, whose king is tributary.

The southern kingdom of Judah, if not actually subject to Omri, is certainly a subordinate ally.

Ahab's marriage to Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal of Sidon, reported in the Bible, forges an alliance with the Phoenicians.

According to the Hebrew scriptures, King Ahab leads Israel in incessant warfare with neighboring Aram (Syria) and undertakes large-scale construction projects in the cities of Israel, …

King Hoshea of Israel attempts, with encouragement by Egypt, to rid his country of Assyrian rule (2 Kings 17).

In response, Assyrian forces, personally led by Shalmaneser V, invade Israel in 724 via Bit-Adini to besiege the capital city of Samaria and …

Shalmaneser lays siege for three years, until he breaks “the resistance of Shamara'in” (Samaria).

He dies shortly before the capture of the city, however, and is succeeded by Sargon II, who takes credit for the destruction of Samaria in 722 and the deportation, to Syria, of twenty seven thousand two hundred and ninety of its inhabitants.

What happened to Hoshea following the end of the kingdom of Israel, and when or where he died, is unknown.

The exiles become known to history as the ten lost tribes of Israel.

…Sargon has Samaria rebuilt as the capital of the new province of Samerina and settles it with people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim (2 Kings 17:6, 24).

Samaria’s post-conquest inhabitants are allegedly colonists who adopt what later Jewish tradition will characterize as a distorted form of Judaism.

The new inhabitants had originally worshipped their own gods, but when the then-sparsely populated areas became infested with dangerous wild beasts, they appealed to the king of Assyria for Israelite priests to instruct them on how to worship the "god of that country."

The result is a syncretistic religion, in which national groups worship the Lord, but they also serve their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.

Some Samaritans claim to be descendants of Israelites from the Northern Kingdom who had escaped deportation and exile.

Today’s Samaritans, who hold to the Pentateuch as their Scripture and honor Moses as the only prophet, claim descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh and maintain that they have preserved the way and will of Yahweh, though they accept little of later Jewish theology.

Their temple, which is at Mount Gerizim, not Jerusalem, will by destroyed by the Macabbean king John Hyrcanus late in the second century BCE, although their descendants still worship among its ruins.

A genetic study in the beginning of the twenty-first century concluded from Y-chromosome analysis that Samaritans descend from the Israelites (including Cohen, or priests), and mitochondrial DNA analysis shows descent from Assyrians and other foreign women, effectively validating both local and foreign origins for the Samaritans. (Shen et al, 2004)