In 721 B.C. ᴀssyria swept out of the north, captured the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and took the ten tribes into captivity. From there they became lost to history.

ᴀssyria, named for the god Ashur (highest in the pantheon of ᴀssyrian gods), was located in the Mesopotamian plain. It was bordered on the west by the Syrian desert, on the south by Babylonia, and on the north and east by the Persian and Urarthian hills (see J. D. Douglas, ed., The Illustrated Bible Dictionary, s.v. “ᴀssyria,” 1:137). This area today is primarily the nation of Iraq.

Perhaps the earliest inhabitants of the area were the Subareans, who were joined later by the Sumerians. In the third millennium B.C. came the Semites who eventually merged with the Subareans and Sumerians. “They took their common language and their arts from Sumeria, but modified them later into an almost undistinguishable similarity to the language and arts of Babylonia. Their circumstances, however, forbade them to indulge in the effeminate ease of Babylon; from beginning to end they were a race of warriors, mighty in muscle and courage, abounding in proud hair and beard, standing straight, stern and solid on their monuments, and bestriding with tremendous feet the east-Mediterranean world. Their history is one of kings and slaves, wars and conquests, bloody victories and sudden defeat.” (Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, The Story of Civilization, 1:266.)

ᴀssyria’s ascent as a formidable power in the Near East was due in large measure to strong kings who increased her borders and subjected other nations as tributaries. ᴀssyria first became an independent nation between 1813 and 1781 B.C. under Shamshi-Adad (see LaMar C. Berrett, Discovering the World of the Bible, p. 180). Other powerful kings who left their mark on ᴀssyrian history included Tiglath-pileser I (1115–1077 B.C.), Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.), Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.), Shamshi-Adad V (824–811 B.C.), Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 B.C.), Shalmaneser V (726–722 B.C.), Sargon II (721–705 B.C.), Sennacherib (704–681 B.C.), Esarhaddon (680–669 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal (668–627 B.C.) (see Berrett, World of the Bible, p. 180; see also Douglas, Illustrated Bible Dictionary, s.v. “ᴀssyria,” 1:139).

Under these kings ᴀssyria reached its greatest apex of power, controlling the area that included not only ᴀssyria but also Babylonia, Armenia, Media, Judea, Syria, Phoenicia, Sumeria, Elam, and Egypt. This empire “was without doubt the most extensive administrative organization yet seen in the Mediterranean or Near Eastern world; only Hammurabi and Thutmose III had approached it, and Persia alone would equal it before the coming of Alexander”

The most vital part of the ᴀssyrian government was its army. Warfare was a science to the leaders of ᴀssyria. Infantry, chariots, cavalry (introduced by Ashurnasirpal to aid the infantry and chariots), sappers, armor made from iron, siege machines, and battering rams were all developed or perfected by the ᴀssyrians. Strategy and tactics were also well understood by the ᴀssyrian officers. (See Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, 1:270–71.)

But it was not just ᴀssyrian effectiveness in warfare that struck terror to the hearts of the Near Eastern world. They were savage and brutal as well.

“A captured city was usually plundered and burnt to the ground, and its site was deliberately deɴuᴅᴇd by killing its trees. The loyalty of the troops was secured by dividing a large part of the spoils among them; their bravery was ensured by the general rule of the Near East that all captives in war might be enslaved or slain. Soldiers were rewarded for every severed head they brought in from the field, so that the aftermath of a victory generally witnessed the wholesale decapitation of fallen foes. Most often the prisoners, who would have consumed much food in a long campaign, and would have consтιтuted a danger and nuisance in the rear, were dispatched after the battle; they knelt with their backs to their captors, who beat their heads in with clubs, or cut them off with cutlᴀsses. Scribes stood by to count the number of prisoners taken and killed by each soldier, and apportioned the booty accordingly; the king, if time permitted, presided at the slaughter. The nobles among the defeated were given more special treatment: their ears, noses, hands and feet were sliced off, or they were thrown from high towers, or they and their children were beheaded, or flayed alive, or roasted over a slow fire. …

“In all departments of ᴀssyrian life we meet with a patriarchal sternness natural to a people that lived by conquest, and in every sense on the border of barbarism. Just as the Romans took thousands of prisoners into lifelong slavery after their victories, and dragged others to the Circus Maximus to be torn to pieces by starving animals, so the ᴀssyrians seemed to find satisfaction—or a necessary tutelage for their sons—in torturing captives, blinding children before the eyes of their parents, flaying men alive, roasting them in kilns, chaining them in cages for the amusement of the populace, and then sending the survivors off to execution. Ashurnasirpal tells how ‘all the chiefs who had revolted I flayed, with their skins I covered the pillar, some in the midst I walled up, others on stakes I impaled, still others I arranged around the pillar on stakes. … As for the chieftains and royal officers who had rebelled, I cut off their members.’ Ashurbanipal boasts that ‘I burned three thousand captives with fire, I left not a single one among them alive to serve as a hostage.’ Another of his inscriptions reads: ‘These warriors who had sinned against Ashur and had plotted evil against me … from their hostile mouths have I torn their tongues, and I have compᴀssed their destruction. As for the others who remained alive, I offered them as a funerary sacrifice; … their lacerated members have I given unto the dogs, the swine, the wolves. … By accomplishing these deeds I have rejoiced the heart of the great gods.’ Another monarch instructs his artisans to engrave upon the bricks these claims on the admiration of posterity: ‘My war chariots crush men and beasts. … The monuments which I erect are made of human corpses from which I have cut the head and limbs. I cut off the hands of all those whom I capture alive.’ Reliefs at Nineveh show men being impaled or flayed, or having their tongues torn out; one shows a king gouging out the eyes of prisoners with a lance while he holds their heads conveniently in place with a cord pᴀssed through their lips.”

The prophet Isaiah warned Israel that if they did not repent, the Lord would use ᴀssyria as “the rod of mine anger” (Isaiah 10:5). ᴀssyria was at the height of its power, and its reputation for terror and brutality should have been sufficient to turn Israel back to their God, but they would not heed. Under the reign of Tiglath-pileser II, ᴀssyria began consolidating its power in the western part of the empire. Around 738 B.C. he demanded and received tribute from Damascus, the capital of Syria, and Samaria, the capital of Israel (see 2 Kings 15:19–20). But four years later, the two Syrian states rebelled, and once again Tiglath-pileser moved in. Damascus was conquered, as was part of the territory of the Northern Kingdom, and the people were carried off into captivity (see 2 Kings 15:29).

It seems to have been Tiglath-pileser who originated large-scale deportations of conquered peoples. By deporting a conquered people en mᴀsse to a foreign land, Tiglath-pileser hoped to break their unity and destroy their national idenтιтy (see The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. “ᴀssyria and Babylonia,” 1:272).

The practice of large deportations continued under Shalmaneser and later Sargon II, successors to Tiglath-pileser who also played an important role in the history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Because of the revolt of Hoshea, king of Israel, Shalmaneser laid siege to Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom. The siege lasted three years, during which time Shalmaneser died and was succeeded by Sargon II. Sargon II finally destroyed Samaria and carried the survivors captive into ᴀssyria (see 2 Kings 17:1–6), thus ending the history of Israel in the Old Testament and setting the stage for the loss of the ten northern tribes.

Not long after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom (Israel), the Southern Kingdom (Judah) was also threatened with destruction by ᴀssyria. Sennacherib, successor to Sargon II, attacked Judah during the reign of King Hezekiah and destroyed most of her principal cities. Through the intervention of the Lord, however, Sennacherib was unable to capture Jerusalem (see Notes and Commentary on 2 Kings 19:35). Having failed to conquer Judah, Sennacherib returned home to Nineveh, capital of ᴀssyria at the time.

Nineveh, the city in which Jonah had preached repentance, was the last capital of the ᴀssyrian Empire (Ashur and Calah were the first two capitals). Sennacherib rebuilt the city, strengthened its walls, and built a canal system to bring water into it. But Zephaniah and Nahum both prophesied that Nineveh would be destroyed (see Zephaniah 2:13–15; Nahum 3). The destruction of Nineveh in 612 B.C. fulfilled the words of these two Old Testament prophets.

The ᴀssyrian Empire, too, was destroyed, in part because, as Durant noted, “the qualities of body and character that had helped to make the ᴀssyrian armies invincible were weakened by the very victories that they won; in each victory it was the strongest and bravest who died, while the infirm and cautious survived to multiply their kind; it was a dysgenic [biologically defective] process that perhaps made for civilization by weeding out the more brutal types, but undermined the biological basis upon which ᴀssyria had risen to power. The extent of her conquests had helped to weaken her; not only had they depopulated her fields to feed insatiate Mars [the god of war], but they had brought into ᴀssyria, as captives, millions of desтιтute aliens who bred with the fertility of the hopeless, destroyed all national unity of character and blood, and became by their growing numbers a hostile and disintegrating force in the very midst of the conquerors. More and more the army itself was filled by these men of other lands, while semi-barbarous marauders harᴀssed every border, and exhausted the resources of the country in an endless defense of its unnatural frontiers.” (Our Oriental Heritage, 1:283.)

Finally, under Nabopolᴀssar, the Chaldeans and Babylonians drove the ᴀssyrians out of Babylonia in 625 B.C. The Medes and Babylonians then united and captured Ashur in 614 B.C. Two years later Nineveh, capital of ᴀssyria itself, fell. With the destruction of ᴀssyria, Babylon became the world empire that all countries in the Near East feared and paid tribute to.