THE ASSYRIAN CAPTIVITY.--The two kingdoms, in the ninth and eighth centuries, instead of standing together against the threatening might of Assyria, sought heathen alliances, and wasted their strength in mutual contention. Against these hopeless alliances, and against the idolatry and the formalism which debased the people, the prophets contended with intense earnestness and unflinching courage. _Amos_, called from feeding his flocks, inveighed against frivolity and vice, misgovernment and fraud, in Israel. _Hosea_ warned _Menahem_ (743-737 B.C.) against invoking the help of Assyria against Damascus, but in vain. He was terribly punished by what he suffered from the Assyrians; but Jotham (740-736 B.C.) and Ahaz (736-728 B.C.), the Judaean kings, successively followed his example. _Tiglath-Pileser_ made Judaea tributary. The Assyrian rites were brought into the temple of Jehovah. The service of Canaanitish deities was introduced. The one incorruptible witness for the cause of Jehovah was the fearless and eloquent prophet, _Isaiah_. Hosea, king of Israel, by his alliance with Egypt against _Sargon_, so incensed this most warlike of the Assyrian monarchs, that, when he had subdued the Phoenician cities, he laid siege to Samaria; and, having captured it at the end of a siege of three years, he led away the king and the larger part of his subjects as captives, to the Euphrates and the Tigris, and replaced them by subjects of his own (722 B.C.). The later Samaritans were the descendants of this mixed population.