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SamariaAid to Bible Understanding
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for three years. When it finally fell in 740, many of the leading inhabitants were deported into exile and settled in Mesopotamia and Media. Whether credit for the ultimate capture of the city goes to Shalmaneser V or to his successor Sargon II is still not a settled question.—2 Ki. 17:1-6, 22, 23; 18:9-12; see SARGON.
With the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians the Bible’s detailed history of the city ends. Thereafter, mention of the city is often, though not always (2 Ki. 23:18; Acts 8:5), made in way of a reminder of what becomes of those who rebel against Jehovah. (2 Ki. 18:34; 21:13; Isa. 10:9-11; 36:19) After the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent assassination of Gedaliah, the Bible relates, eighty men from Shechem, Shiloh and Samaria came down toward Mizpah and encountered Ishmael the assassin, who slaughtered many of these men, sparing some of them who promised to show him where they had treasures of wheat, barley and oil hidden.—Jer. 41:1-9.
Secular records relate some of Samaria’s history from and after the days of Alexander the Great. In Roman times its splendor was due to the building program of Herod the Great, who renamed the city Sebaste (a feminine Greek form for the Latin name Augustus), in honor of Augustus, the first emperor. Today the modern Arabic name Sebastiyeh preserves the name Herod gave it. It is therefore not surprising that excavations at this site have uncovered the remains of a number of different periods in its history, few of which are from the days of Israel’s kings.
2. The territory of the ten-tribe northern kingdom of Israel. The name of its capital city, Samaria, was sometimes applied to this entire area. As, for example, when Ahab was called “the king of Samaria,” it was not with the restricted meaning of being king of the city only, but in the broader sense as king of the ten tribes. (1 Ki. 21:1) So too “the cities of Samaria” referred to those scattered throughout the ten tribes, not to towns clustered around the capital. (2 Ki. 23:19; this same expression recorded at 1 Kings 13:32 as if used before the city Samaria was built, if not prophetic, may have been introduced by the compiler of the Kings account.) The famine “in Samaria” in the days of Ahab was extensive throughout the whole kingdom of Samaria and, in fact, even took in Phoenicia, extending at least from the torrent valley of Cherith E of the Jordan to Zarephath on the Mediterranean. (1 Ki. 17:1-12; 18:2, 5, 6) Similarly, the restoration promise regarding “the mountains of Samaria” must have embraced the whole of the realm of Samaria.—Jer. 31:5.
Tiglath-pileser III seems to have been the first to uproot Israelites from Samaria’s territory, some prominent Reubenites, Gadites and Manassites from E of the Jordan being among those moved to Assyria. (1 Chron. 5:6, 26) When the northern kingdom finally fell, more were taken into exile. (2 Ki. 17:6) But this time the king of Assyria (apparently, Sargon II) replaced these Israelites with people from other parts of his realm, a transplanting policy continued by Esar-haddon and Asenappar (Ashurbanipal).—2 Ki. 17:24; Ezra 4:2, 10.
Lions began to multiply in the land, probably because the land, or a large part of it, had lain waste for a time. (Compare Exodus 23:29.) The settlers doubtless felt, superstitiously, that it was because they did not understand how to worship the god of the land. Therefore the king of Assyria sent back a calf-worshiping priest from exile. He taught them about Jehovah, but in the same manner as Jeroboam had done, so that they learned something about Jehovah but actually continued to worship their own false gods.—2 Ki. 17:24-41.
3. The Roman district through which Jesus occasionally traveled and into which the apostles later brought the message of Christianity. Its boundaries are not definitely known today, but, generally, it lay between Galilee in the N and Judea in the S, and extended from the Jordan W to the coastal plains of the Mediterranean. For the most part the district embraced the territories once belonging to the tribe of Ephraim and half the tribe of Manasseh (W of the Jordan).
From time to time, on his way to and from Jerusalem, Jesus passed through Samaria, situated as it was between the districts of Judea and Galilee. (Luke 17:11; John 4:3-6) But for the most part he refrained from preaching in this territory, even telling the twelve whom he sent out to avoid Samaritan cities and, instead, to “go continually to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” that is, the Jews.—Matt. 10:5, 6.
However, this restriction covered only a limited time, for just before his ascension to heaven Jesus told his disciples they should carry the good news, not only to Samaria, but to the most distant part of the earth. (Acts 1:8, 9) So it was that when persecution broke out in Jerusalem the disciples, Philip in particular, took up the ministry in Samaria. Peter and John followed Philip there, resulting in further expansion of Christianity.—Acts 8:1-17, 25; 9:31; 15:3.
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SamaritanAid to Bible Understanding
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SAMARITAN
(Sa·marʹi·tan).
The term “Samaritans” first appeared in Scripture after the conquest of the ten-tribe kingdom of Samaria in 740 B.C.E.; it was applied to those who lived in the northern kingdom before that conquest as distinct from the foreigners later brought in from other parts of the Assyrian Empire. (2 Ki. 17:29) It appears that Sargon II of Assyria did not remove all the Israelite inhabitants, for the account at 2 Chronicles 34:6-9 (compare 2 Kings 23:19, 20) implies that during King Josiah’s reign there were Israelites still in the land. “Samaritans” in time came to mean the descendants of those left in Samaria and those brought in by Sargon. Therefore some were undoubtedly the products of mixed marriages. Then at a still later period the name carried more of a religious, rather than a racial or political connotation, a Samaritan meaning one who belonged to the religious sect that flourished in the vicinity of ancient Shechem and Samaria, and which held to certain tenets distinctly different from Judaism.—John 4:9.
The development of the Samaritan religion was due to a number of factors, not the least of which stemmed from Jeroboam’s efforts at alienating the ten tribes from Jehovah’s worship as centered at Jerusalem. For about two hundred and fifty years the God-ordained Levitical priests had been replaced by a man-appointed priesthood, which, in turn, led the kingdom of Israel in the practice of demoralizing idolatry.—1 Ki. 12:28-33; 2 Ki. 17:7-17; 2 Chron. 11:13-15; 13:8, 9.
Then came the fall of the northern kingdom. The pagan immigrants brought in from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim were worshipers of many deities—Succoth-benoth, Nergal, Ashima, Nibhaz Tartak, Adrammelech and Anammelech. Although they learned something about Jehovah, through instruction by a priest of the ‘Jeroboam priesthood,’ yet, as Samaria had done with the golden calves, they continued to worship their false gods, generation after generation. (2 Ki. 17:24-41) Josiah’s extensive efforts to rid these northern communities of their idol worship, nearly a hundred years after Samaria fell, had no more lasting effect than similar reforms made by him in the southern kingdom of Judah.—2 Ki. 23:4-20; 2 Chron. 34:6, 7.
DEVELOPMENTS AFTER JEWS RETURNED FROM EXILE
In 537 B.C.E. a remnant of the twelve tribes returned from Babylonian exile prepared to rebuild Jehovah’s temple in Jerusalem. (Ezra 1:3; 2:1, 70) It was then that the “Samaritans,” who were already in the land when the Israelites arrived and who were described as “adversaries of Judah and Benjamin,” approached Zerubbabel and the older men, saying, “Let us build along with you; for, just like you, we search for your God and to him we are sacrificing since the days of Esar-haddon the king of Assyria, who brought us up here.” (Ezra 4:1, 2) This claim of devotion to Jehovah, however, proved to be only lip service, for when Zerubbabel declined their offer, the Samaritans did everything they could to prevent the building of the temple. After all their concerted efforts at harassment and intimidation had failed they then made false accusations in a letter to the Persian emperor, and succeeded in getting a government decree issued that put a stop to the construction for a number of years.—Ezra 4:3-24.
In the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., when Nehemiah began repairing Jerusalem’s walls, Sanballat (governor of Samaria, according to one of the Elephantine Papyri) made several strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to stop the project. (Neh. 2:19, 20; 4:1-12; 6:1-15) Later, after an extended absence, Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem to find that the grandson of High Priest Eliashib had married Sanballat’s daughter. Immediately, Nehemiah “chased him away.”—Neh. 13:6, 7, 28.
The erection of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim in competition to the one in Jerusalem is considered by some as marking the final separation of the Jews and Samaritans, although some think the severance in relations came more than a century later. When Jesus began his ministry, the breach between the two had not been healed, although the Gerizim temple had been destroyed more than a century and a half earlier. (John 4:9) The Samaritans were still worshiping on Mount Gerizim (4:20-23), and the Jews had little respect for them. (8:48) This existing scornful attitude permitted Jesus to make a strong point in his illustration of the neighborly Samaritan.—Luke 10:29-37.
SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH
From early times, the Scriptures of the Samaritans have consisted of only the first five books of the Bible, and these only in their own recension, written in their own characters and known as the “Samaritan Pentateuch.” The rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the possible exception of the book of Joshua, they rejected. The Samaritan Pentateuch differs from the Masoretic text in some 6,000 instances, most of which are minor, but some are major, as, for example, the reading of Deuteronomy 27:4, where Gerizim is substituted for Ebal, the place where the laws of Moses were to be inscribed on whitewashed stones. (Deut. 27:8) The obvious reason for this change was to give credence to their belief that Gerizim is the holy mountain of God.
But their acceptance of the Pentateuch, by and large, gave the Samaritans the basis to believe that a prophet greater than Moses would come. (Deut. 18:18, 19) In the first century Samaritans were looking for the coming of Christ the Messiah, and some of them recognized him at his first presence; others rejected him. (Luke 17:16-19; John 4:9-43; Luke 9:52-56) Later, through the preaching of the early Christian, many Samaritans gladly embraced Christianity.—Acts 8:1-17, 25; 9:31; 15:3.
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SamekhAid to Bible Understanding
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SAMEKH
[ם].
The fifteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, also later used outside the Hebrew Scriptures as a number to denote sixty.
Saʹmekh corresponds generally to the sound of English “s.” This letter represents the sound that the Ephraimites used when endeavoring to pronounce the word “shibboleth,” which begins with the letter shin (ש) rather than with saʹmekh. (Judg. 12:6; see also SIN or SHIN.) In the Hebrew, saʹmekh is the initial letter in each of the eight verses of Psalm 119:113-120.
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Samgar-neboAid to Bible Understanding
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SAMGAR-NEBO
(Samʹgar-neʹbo) [possibly, “be gracious, Nebo”].
The name or title of one of the Babylonian princes who entered Jerusalem right after a breach was made in its walls in the summer of 607 B.C.E.—Jer. 39:3.
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SamlahAid to Bible Understanding
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SAMLAH
(Samʹlah) [mantle].
The fifth-named king of Edom who reigned before a king ruled Israel. Samlah was from Masrekah.—Gen. 36:31-37; 1 Chron. 1:47, 48.
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SamosAid to Bible Understanding
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SAMOS
(Saʹmos) [height].
An island in the Aegean Sea near the W coast of Asia Minor. Paul apparently stopped briefly at Samos on the return from his third missionary tour.—Acts 20:15.
This island is separated by a one-mile (1.6 kilometer) strait from the Asian promontory named Trogyllium. Samos was SW of Ephesus and NW of Miletus. (See map on page 685.) It is about twenty-seven miles (43 kilometers) in length and fourteen miles (23 kilometers) in width. Though very mountainous, it is remarkably fertile. Over the years it came under the domination of Persia, Athens, Pergamum and Rome. At the time of Paul’s missionary journeys it was a free state. Its major city and port was also named Samos. The island was celebrated for the cult of Hera (Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage and childbirth) and had a temple to her which vied in splendor and celebrity with the temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
According to the Scriptural account, the ship Paul was on when returning to Jerusalem stopped at Chios, sailed some sixty-five miles (104 kilometers) down the coast of Asia Minor and ‘touched at Samos, and on the following day arrived at Miletus.’ (Acts 20:15) Certain manuscripts add an expression that leads to the rendering “we touched at Samos and, after stopping at Trogyllium, made Miletus the next day.” (JB) This has been understood to mean that the ship did not remain in port at Samos, but, instead, crossed the strait and anchored in the protection of the high promontory. But the oldest and most reliable manuscripts omit the expression about Trogyllium, and it was rejected by Westcott and Hort in preparing their master text. The ship Paul was on evidently docked briefly at Samos and then traveled on to Miletus.
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SamothraceAid to Bible Understanding
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SAMOTHRACE
(Samʹo·thrace) [possibly, Samos of Thrace].
A mountainous island located in the NE Aegean Sea, having a city of the same name on its N side. Paul’s ship came “with a straight run” to the island of Samothrace from Troas in NW Asia Minor in the spring of 50 C.E. during his second missionary journey. There is, however, no indication that he went ashore. (Acts 16:11) The modern-day island lacks a good harbor, though it offers a number of places for safe anchorage.
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SamsonAid to Bible Understanding
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SAMSON
(Samʹson) [sunny, sunlike, sun-man; or, desolator, destroyer].
One of Israel’s outstanding judges; son of Manoah, a Danite from Zorah. Prior to his birth an angel appeared to his mother and announced that she would bear a son who was to be a Nazirite from birth and “take the lead in saving Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.” (Judg. 13:1-5, 24; 16:17) As future leader in the fight against the Philistines, Samson would have to come near the dead bodies of persons slain in battle. Therefore, the very nature of his commission showed that he did not come under the law prescribing that Nazirites not touch dead bodies. (Num. 6:2-9) It should also be noted that this law applied to persons who voluntarily took a vow of Naziriteship and made no reference to persons who, like Samson, were Nazirites from birth.
When old enough to marry, Samson requested that his parents get a certain Philistine woman from Timnah for him as a wife. This was in harmony with the direction of God’s spirit, as it was to provide occasion for Samson to fight against the Philistines. (Judg. 13:25–14:4) Subsequently, near Timnah, a maned young lion confronted Samson. Empowered by God’s spirit, he tore the animal in two with his bare hands. He then continued on his way to Timnah and there spoke with the Philistine woman whom he wanted as a wife.—Judg. 14:5-7.
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