I stood on the crumblings of an Iron Age acropolis with a valley all around the isolated hill. Cool breezes offset the summer heat, but its haze still obscured the western hills toward the Mediterranean.
The final capital stood beneath my feet, rising three hundred feet above the valley floor.
Its silent, crumbling ruins screamed a truth as timeless as it was timely.
After King Solomon’s death, the nation Israel divided north of the Tribe of Benjamin’s border. Jerusalem stayed the capital in the south.
Samaria served as the northern kingdom’s administrative center for 160 years. Samaria took it name from Shemer, the man who sold Omri the hill (1 Kings 16:24-28).
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(All pics courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)
I only had to stand atop Tel Samaria to see why Omri selected it. This place, it seemed, could almost defend itself.
The peaceful and beautiful surroundings of Tel Samaria have a stark contrast to its history. I could almost catch the echoes of the bloody past that raged there.
Although Jeroboam II gave Samaria its heyday of success, God called it a failure. The Prophet Amos spoke against the godless leaders:
Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure in the mountain of Samaria . . . those who recline on beds of ivory . . . Therefore, they will now go into exile at the head of the exiles. —Amos 6:1, 4, 7
Some of the carved ivory pieces Amos mentioned appear on display in today’s Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. They represent a prosperity that came at the price of a compromised relationship with God. As a result, Israel went into exile.
After the Assyrians dragged the Northern Kingdom into exile in 722 BC, they repopulated the area, producing a mixed breed—partly Jewish, partly Assyrian—called Samaritans. When Alexander the Great placed some Macedonians at Samaria, the religious Samaritans relocated to nearby Mount Gerizim.
Caesar Augustus gave Samaria to Herod the Great, who rebuilt the city to his usual exorbitant standards and renamed the site Sebaste, the Greek name for Augustus.
As I stood on the acropolis, I could see in one glance the crumbling ruins that represented hundreds of years of history.
Like so many great cities of yesteryear, Tel Samaria remains a testimony of all earthly glory.
The only beauty that remains is what God put there to begin with.
In my next post, I’ll share a devotional thought from Samaria.
Tell me what you think: What can the crumbling ruins of the most powerful cities in history teach us about what’s important? To leave a comment, just click here.